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Resources for a Biblical View of Homosexuality

Sep 15, 2022

Pastor Gregg Matte's message on Sun, Sep 18, 2022, looked at Romans 1:22-32. In this passage from Paul's letter to believers in Rome, he addressed homosexuality among other topics.

The following items were compiled by Houston's First staff members to provide you with additional resources related to homosexuality. These items cover various different situations, from personal experience, parenting help, relating to others, and more.

Books | Videos | Articles | Counseling Center | Small Groups | Ministries

Societal Shifts | Book Quotes

Books

Recommended by Pastor Gregg

Other Staff Recommendations

Videos

RightNow Media

RightNow Media offers helpful content for individuals, couples, empty-nesters, and anybody wanting to grow deeper in their faith. Regardless of your age or stage of life, we invite the entire Houston's First family to a FREE membership to RightNow Media! With a RightNow account, you'll be able to watch these and thousands of other videos on a wide range of topics.

Other Videos

Articles

Counseling Center

If you or a loved one are experiencing same-sex attraction and are struggling with how to live faithfully in your faith, the Julianna Poor Memorial Counseling Center at Houston's First can help you navigate that in a safe and confidential way. Call them at 713.335.6462, text COUNSELING to 44322, or visit their page here. Our Counseling Center is available to members and non-members of Houston's First.

Small Groups

  • Barnabas — for men struggling with same-sex attractions and desiring to find freedom through personal relationship with Jesus Christ
  • Hope Group — support group encouraging friends and family members of loved ones struggling with homosexuality
  • LIFT — provides support groups for men and women with unwanted same-sex attraction as well as friends and family of those dealing with homosexuality

Ministries


Societal Shifts

As Pastor Gregg references in his message, major societal shifts have taken place in recent decades and understanding them helps us see how we arrived at a place where homosexuality is more widely accepted today. This is far from an exhaustive list, but this will help us understand our current culture:

  1. 1960s — birth control separated sex from pregnancy
  2. 1970s — abortion separated sex from responsibility
  3. 1970s — "No Fault" divorce weakened marriage
  4. Increased urbanization brought anonymity to sexual activity
    • Removed or diminished the risk of being 'found out' as one might in a small town
  5. Growth of fatherless and broken homes

    So far, the developments above were mostly all related to heterosexual relationships.

  6. Tremendously effective marketing and legal campaign by LGBTQ+ activists
    1. Portray homosexuals as victims
    2. Promote “born gay” theory
    3. Leverage liberal Christianity
    4. Utilize the media to normalize homosexuality
    5. Silence other views
    6. Win in the courts
  7. Surge of pornography and social media
    • Visit our "Victory over Pornography" page for a list of helpful resources, as well as Pastor Gregg's message by the same name
  8. Shifts in societal thinking
    1. Psychology over biology (how you feel overrides your body and DNA; therefore, nothing is clear anymore)
    2. Personal pleasure over God’s will or what is best for community
    3. Society will be turned upside down for a few (for example, only 0.6% of the population claim to be transgendered yet look at the extent of the bathroom debate)
    4. Government, not parents, teach sexual morality
    5. Toleration became affirmation, and now must be celebration
    6. The most private and loving act is now the most public, political and divisive.

Question to ask: Has this societal soil produced a rose of superior sexual morality?



Book Quotes

The following quotes illustrate some of the points listed above:

From We Cannot Be Silent by R. Albert Mohler Jr:

“Conservative Christians far too quickly accuse the proponents of same-sex marriage of being the enemies of marriage, believing that marriage was in great shape before same-sex couples started clamoring for the legal recognitions of the unions. This is intellectual dishonesty, and the record must be set straight. The previous damage to marriage can be traced to the intellectual, sexual, legal, and therapeutic subversion of marriage by heterosexuals.” — p. 89

The following passages from After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the '90s by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen are quoted in Albert Mohler’s book, We Cannot Be Silent.

  • “As cynical as it may seem, AIDS gives us a chance, however brief, to establish ourselves as a victimized minority legitimately deserving of America’s special protection and care.”
  • "To suggest in public that homosexuality might be chosen is to open the can of worms labeled ‘moral choice and sin’ and give the religious intransigents a stick to beat us with."
  • "For example, for several seconds an unctuous, beady-eyed Southern preacher is shown pounding the pulpit in rage against “those perverted, abominable creatures.” While his tirade continues over the soundtrack, the picture switches to the heart-rending photos of badly beaten persons, or of gays who look decent, harmless, and likable; and then we cut back to the poisonous face of the preacher. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect is devastating."

From Strange New World by Carl Trueman:

“Trans ideology increasingly shapes corporate policies too. The banning of Ryan T. Anderson’s calm, thoughtful, and well-researched book, When Harry became Sally, by Amazon in February 2021 was an interesting move. Mao, Hitler, and Stalin remained authors in good standing. The company sent out numerous emails in that very month encouraging customers to purchase Technological Slavery by Theodore Kaczynski. Kaczynski is better known as the Unabomber, the Unites States’ most infamous home-grown terrorist. This work (and his earlier Manifesto) are still available via Amazon. Yet even in the worst-case scenario, Anderson’s book is unlikely to cause a world war, lead to millions of deaths by famine, or inspire a domestic bombing campaign. Somehow, Anderson had committed a more serious crime in the modern therapeutic world: he had challenged the dominant narrative of the trans revolution and called into question whether it really was delivering on the promises it made.

The L, the G, and the B now look remarkably passé, assuming as they do the importance of biological sex for the gender binary. The T and the Q, denying this, have proved both parasitic upon the gains made by the LGB and ultimately destructive of the LGB, as well as of traditional feminism. The civil wars we now see opening up on the left over trans ideology bear witness to this.

More significant, however, is the fact that these radical forms of expressive individualism, allied to powerful narratives of victimhood and oppression, are set to change all of our lives. It is to that we turn in the next chapter, where we will see that two of the most unquestioned freedoms of Western liberal democracy, those of speech and religion, are now in serious jeopardy." — p. 146-147

From The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity by Douglas Murray:

"The manner in which people and movements behave at the point of victory can be the most revealing thing about them. Do you allow arguments that worked for you to work for others? Are reciprocity and tolerance principles or fig-leaves? Do those who have been censored go on to censor others when the ability is in their own hands?

In doing so they contradict the claims made by gay rights activists from the start of the battle for gay equality, which is that it should be no business of anyone else what consenting adults get up to in private. If that goes for the rights of gay groups then surely it ought to apply to the rights of Christian fundamentalists and other groups too." — p. 16


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