Jan. 22, 2016 Show with Andrew Beckwith on “The Homosexual Agenda Against Christian Adoption”

Iron Sharpens Iron

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

00:08

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

00:16

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

00:23

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

00:32

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

00:46

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

00:57

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

01:05

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet

01:11

Earth, listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this very snowy 22nd day of January 2015 as those here in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and other parts of the

01:30

United States are expecting a very severe snowstorm. So we ask of your prayers for safety for all those who live in this area and I am looking forward with great anticipation to today's program.

01:46

It's a very vital subject. It's a subject that many of our listeners, even those who are fully aware of the fact that the leftist and homosexual agenda has really made incredible and very disturbing headway into the government and public square of the

02:11

United States and the world. Many of you still fully aware of that may be shocked by what we are discussing today.

02:20

We are discussing primarily the homosexual agenda against Christian adoption.

02:27

My guests today are Andrew Beckwith, who is the president of the

02:32

Massachusetts Family Institute, and we also have an anonymous guest. This is the only the second time since conducting the

02:41

Iron Sharpens Iron broadcast going way back to 2006. This is the only the second time

02:47

I've ever had an anonymous guest, but you'll find out why he is remaining anonymous as this program proceeds.

02:55

But first of all, let me welcome for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Andrew Beckwith of the

03:01

Massachusetts Family Institute. Thank you for having me on the show. It's an honor. Well, let our listeners know please,

03:07

Andrew, what exactly the Massachusetts Family Institute is and what you do.

03:13

Sure. We are the local associate in Massachusetts for Focus on the Family and their public policy partner, which is

03:20

CitizenLink. We're part of a national network of 38 different state family policy councils, and I'm happy to say you have one there in Pennsylvania, the

03:28

Pennsylvania Family Institute in Harrisburg with my counterpart, Mike Geer, who's been doing work there for I think about two decades.

03:36

It's a great guy, a wonderful resource for your listeners. They're in the home front of Pennsylvania, and what we do is,

03:42

I think Dr. James Dobson's vision when he started these local family policy councils in connection with Focus on the

03:49

Family about 20 years ago, was to have sort of boots on the ground for these public policy battles and education at the local level, at the state level, where it's much easier to have influence on a state representative or state senator than a federal congressman or senator.

04:06

Numbers count that way. So Massachusetts Family Institute was formed 25 years ago here in Massachusetts, and we've been focusing on family values issues, strengthening the family and the

04:16

Judeo -Christian values upon which the family is based. Primarily those include the sanctity of life from birth to natural death, the dignity of natural marriage and all the issues surrounding human sexuality, and increasingly fighting to defend a religious liberty, people of faith in the

04:34

Commonwealth. And we are allied with the Family Research Council, and Tony Perkins down in D .C.,

04:40

as well as Focus, and also Alliance Defending Freedom out of Scottsdale, Arizona.

04:46

Yes, I am very familiar with Alliance Defending Freedom, because back in the early 2000s,

04:53

I think, it might have been the late 90s, but I orchestrated a live public debate between a world -renowned

05:03

Christian apologist, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and Barry Lynn, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

05:14

And the issue was, is homosexuality compatible with biblical

05:19

Christianity? And Mr. Lynn lost that debate very obviously and very badly.

05:29

In fact, he knew this was on a Christian and biblical theme. He did not even bring a Bible to the debate.

05:36

He merely brought a yellow legal pad with some notes scribbled on it. And when he realized how badly he had been defeated in this debate, he used his final summation time to yell at the audience and scold them, and accused everybody of hate and bigotry and so on.

05:56

And basically, what had happened was, when Dr. White started making the video available of this debate,

06:04

Mr. Lynn threatened a lawsuit. And I called our good friends at Alliance Defending Freedom, which used to be the

06:14

Alliance Defense Fund, as you know. And they represented James White.

06:20

And Mr. Lynn and his organization were shocked that we were willing to proceed with a court case on this.

06:31

And when Mr. Lynn and his colleagues did not show up at the hearing, the judge threw out the whole matter and gave

06:40

Dr. White legal freedom to distribute the video. So I am very thankful for that organization.

06:48

Let me turn now to our anonymous guest, and if you could please let our listeners know why you are participating on this program and why you are remaining anonymous, to the best that you can reveal, obviously.

07:03

Yeah, we just want to make awareness of this situation that's happening not only in Massachusetts, but around the country.

07:10

There's clearly an agenda to not only give permission for homosexuality, but they want flat -out approval and praise.

07:18

I think early on in the movement it was just making it acceptable to the public, but now they want to oppose everyone that stands in opposition.

07:27

So if you are a conservative Christian, if you are someone who holds to conservative values, they don't even want you to apply for foster care or adoptive care in many of the states.

07:38

And it just seems like a lot of Christianity has their head in the sand, and I just think this issue needs to be made aware so that the kids don't suffer, because that's the whole main point why we're here today, is that children that have either been abandoned by their family or abused by their family or cast into the situation of being orphans for many different ways are the ones that are suffering as conservative people are being forced out of this realm, and therefore the only option is either very liberal homes or homes that are in full approval of homosexuality, or the only homes left for foster care and adoption.

08:16

And that just is not acceptable, considering God calls the Church to care for the orphans, and so we're just wanting to make that aware, not only the negatives, but also the positive, that the

08:27

Church should be much more involved in this process of caring for the orphans. And I'm going to announce our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question or comment.

08:39

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

08:49

And if you have a matter that you want to ask about that is personal or private, and you would like to remain anonymous just like our guest, you may feel free to do so, but if it's just a general question about this issue, we would like you to at least give us your first name, and please give us your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the

09:14

USA. I got my first email recently from a pastor in Fiji, so I'm always delighted to hear from pastors and listeners globally who enjoy

09:27

Iron Sharpens Iron and are blessed by it. So please try to let us know where you're emailing from if that's at all possible.

09:36

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. So I'm assuming,

09:42

Andrew and Anonymous, that the case that those involved in homosexual activism and their political allies,

09:54

I'm assuming the case they are trying to make against Christians and those with conservative and or biblical moral values, they are trying to make the case that it is child abuse in some fashion to teach children something that they deem to be hateful and bigoted and wicked, if you will.

10:18

You're absolutely right, Chris. In fact, there's a social media campaign which says homophobia equals child abuse and that April is

10:28

National Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month, and so they want to make the case that homophobia is child abuse.

10:34

That particular campaign is put up by the Ally 40 Center, which is a LGBT homeless shelter in New York City.

10:45

I've come across some of their social media campaigns with that specific connection, which obviously is very concerning to people of faith because we see how routinely just your basic biblical perspective on human sexuality is deemed to be homophobic, and so once they connect those dots, then you know, faithful Orthodox Christians are by definition homophobic, which means they're an abusive environment for children, and that can be absolutely disastrous.

11:18

It's one of the things that I try to explain to pastors because oftentimes they go around talking to churches, explaining public policy issues and how we as people of faith need to be involved and engaged in the public square.

11:30

You kind of get some resistance and pushback that, well look, we don't we don't want to get involved in politics, and we don't want to lose our tax -exempt status, we don't want to be controversial, we just want to, you know, care for widows and orphans like Jesus told us to.

11:42

What I tell them is you cannot care for orphans if the laws have been altered or interpreted such that, you know, it's deemed child abuse to put a child with a

11:54

Christian family. So if you want to care for orphans, you know, in a literal fashion, you have to guard the religious freedom and, you know, the culture in general in order to maintain that right to be able to care for those children who desperately need faithful homes.

12:14

Now, lest some of our listeners think that this is just sensationalism and scare tactics, and you know,

12:23

I often hear liberals laugh when conservatives make claims about the government's control over our personal lives as Christians and are, you know, incrementally robbing us of our rights.

12:40

They laugh at the notion of Obama trying to take all our guns away and all that kind of thing.

12:47

What is actually happening in reality involving those who are

12:54

Christians and those who have biblical morals in regard to adoption and foster parenting and the state and the agencies that are regulating those things?

13:09

Great question. As a conservative blogger named Rod Dreher has put it, he calls it the law of merited impossibility.

13:18

And what he says is it'll never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.

13:25

And that's kind of what we've seen across the board with the LGBT agenda over time. Here in Massachusetts, you know, first state in the nation to have same -sex marriage imposed judicially by the

13:35

Massachusetts state Supreme Court. And that was one of the arguments, is that it would be this massive erosion of religious liberty, that the two movements are in conflict.

13:49

And we're routinely called, you know, fear -mongers and scare tactics. And yet we see, a decade later, that what we warned about has happened.

14:00

Not only has the Catholic Church lost the ability to run its own adoption agency that's consistent with its principles of faith, the

14:10

Catholic charity's going to have to get out of the adoption business in 2006, a couple years after the same -sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts.

14:18

But now, not only is it not permissible for a Christian organization to refrain from placing children in homosexual households, now we have the state

14:28

DCF sort of behind the scenes making it difficult for Christian families to even have children placed with them.

14:37

So things have been turned on their heads in less than a decade. And, you know, again we were called fear -mongers for talking about this thing, warning about these type of things a decade ago, and now they're here.

14:49

And what I've come across so far has been largely anecdotal with the anonymous individual here in one of those cases.

14:58

As we're trying to piece together who is causing this and how it's happening, there was actually a very public case just got decided about a month ago that involved a

15:09

Christian family in spanking, so it wasn't directly on the LGBTQ issue. It was on whether or not a corporal punishment would be allowed, not for the foster child or adoptive child, but for the biological children of the adoptive parents.

15:25

And the reason why I bring that up is because the court decision really shed light on the workings of DCF.

15:32

The bottom line is this. There is a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that said it is okay to spank, you know, within certain bounds.

15:38

It is okay to spank your children. But despite that, and despite the fact that the

15:44

DCF had no regulation that said you can't spank, they claimed that just sort of their broad authority to look after the welfare of children, the best interests of children, allowed them to make the decision, even though there was no law or regulation given the authority to do such, that spanking was not acceptable or permissible for potential placement homes.

16:08

And so in that case, the court agreed with DCF and gave them this broad latitude to basically make up their own policies and not have to have them in writing, but to enforce them just as they see fit because of the importance of keeping children safe, as defined by DCF, and that's the problem.

16:28

And the second point where that case intersects with the current issue of the LGBT agenda is that the family of the

16:37

Magizous, it's the last name, Greg and Melanie Magizous of Massachusetts, they also claimed that it was a violation of their religious rights because their decision to use corporal punishment sparingly and appropriately with their biological children was a result of their religious beliefs.

16:54

And the court interestingly said that DCF, by not allowing children to be placed with them because of the spanking issue, was burdening their legal, their religious freedom.

17:06

However, that burden was outweighed by the department, DCF's compelling interest in protecting the physical and emotional well -being of foster children.

17:16

So basically what this decision says is if DCF claims that something is a threat to children's safety or well -being, then we defer to them because they're the experts, they're the administrative professionals on this.

17:30

And unfortunately what we've seen is that there are people high up in DCF that really have an animus towards Christians and a

17:39

Christian belief on these issues of human sexuality and who believe that lie, that Christianity equals homophobia equals child abuse, and they're willing to enforce their beliefs throughout the agency.

17:55

And there probably is not a written policy on this type of thing. So we just have the anecdotal evidence and apparently after reading through this court decision, which is very disappointing, they're going to be able to get away with it at least for now.

18:10

Yeah, Chris, there seems to be two issues that when DCF is asked publicly, you know, about the welfare of children, they will always want to say we do everything in the best interest of the children.

18:21

And so it sounds good when you hear that on the front end, but then behind the scenes as people are coming forward to apply for, to be foster parents or adoptive parents, they're being asked two questions.

18:34

They have hours of training, but the two questions that they ask are, are you for homosexuality and are you against spanking?

18:42

And if you answer no to either one of those questions, then you're automatically thrown, kicked out of the system.

18:48

And unless you're willing to, as the Magoos did, you know, press this issue, it's never going to be overturned.

18:55

And it's really sad, but I know some great people who I would place all my children in their home,

19:01

I trust them that much. And they would simply ask the question, is homosexuality a sin in your understanding of your religious views?

19:09

And they simply said, yes, they, they weren't being, you know, hateful. They weren't being ugly. They didn't say anything, you know, in a way that was derogatory.

19:17

They just simply said, yes, we believe that Bible teaches that homosexuality is sin. And they were kicked right out.

19:22

They were, they had a letter written to them. They had to fight for that letter to even get the letter to say why they were kicked out because DCF wants to do it quietly.

19:31

Oh, just, you know, they just didn't qualify. That's all they want to tell people. And they don't want to make these issues the main issues.

19:37

And yet, behind the scenes, it is the main issue. So if you say that homosexuality is sin,

19:42

I'm not talking about that you're out on the street corner saying hateful things and waving signs as, you know, some supposed

19:48

Christian churches do. We're just talking about people with their personal convictions, seeing that the Scripture says that sexual perversion is a sin.

19:55

If you believe that what the Bible says, you're automatically disqualified for being a foster adoptive parent by DCF.

20:03

And then if you escape that avenue, then they'll ask you, do you believe that spanking should be allowed in the home?

20:10

And if you say, yes, we believe the Bible teaches that, you know, parents should discipline their children. Proverbs says, if you don't discipline your child, you hate them.

20:17

If you discipline them, you love them. And if you speak those words, again, instantly, you're automatically kicked out of the system.

20:24

And they want to do it quietly. But the more this goes on, you're seeing a huge shift.

20:29

And there's a video out there from 2013 that in the video, someone asked the question, you know, what's being done about this issue to support the

20:38

LGBT community? And they said, well, we're weeding out those people by making them go through more training.

20:45

And as these conservative people don't want to do the training, they're just timing out of the system.

20:50

And that's really good for us. They're just, it's like you're trying to get them to make a statement, and they won't make the statement.

20:56

And then they finally made a statement saying, if anybody has a conservative view, we're really not interested in you being a part of this system, because we view it as dangerous.

21:04

And again, when someone says dangerous, in line with the caring of children, you know, people automatically say, oh yeah, we don't want anything dangerous to happen with children.

21:12

But they're not listening to the main issues of what's being, you know, said. And in that same video, they said, well, what about people that are transgender?

21:20

What about this and this? Oh no, we don't have any policy that forbids homosexuals or lesbians or transgenders from being foster parents.

21:27

We want to see that everybody has an equal chance, unless you disagree with what they say. So the issue is much bigger than the public is hearing.

21:35

And behind the scenes, so many hateful things are being done to people that are, you know, loving Christian people or just conservative people that want to love children.

21:44

And it's extremely disheartening to see these cases, you know, get closer and closer to Yeah, it is like an episode,

21:54

I recall, of Seinfeld many years ago, of the bizarro world where everything seems to be the exact opposite of what it's supposed to be.

22:05

And the fact that most of those listening to this broadcast, I'm sure, lived in a day when to adopt a child and be an open and active participation in homosexuality would have barred you from adopting a child.

22:23

Now, if you speak in against it in any fashion, you're in jeopardy of not having that privilege.

22:29

It's just insane. Yes. Now, I have heard from people such as Dr.

22:39

Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and other people who have had dialogue with homosexual activists who have publicly spoken at conferences on this issue of homosexual rights and so on, and they have written about the dilemma that Christians face in our day and age.

23:04

They will say, these Christian individuals that I've spoken with and interviewed, that there are a number of people who are involved in a homosexual rights movement who you don't see a lot or hear a lot in the public arena or in the media, who some of them are actually themselves opposed to homosexuals adopting children.

23:32

Not that they necessarily would be in favor of a legal mandate prohibiting them from adopting, but they see, probably recognizing when they were growing up, that they had a loving mother or a loving father that they cherish to this day and adore and would never want to imagine their lives without one or the other.

23:56

And homosexual marriage, same -sex marriage, is a, by design, you are defrauding a child of the privilege of having either a mother or a father, depending upon what gender the two parents happen to share in a same -sex marriage.

24:15

I mean, do you hear more of that, that even some homosexuals may find this whole movement trying to bar

24:23

Christians from adopting children ridiculous, and even who may have their own hesitant views about two people of the same gender adopting a child?

24:34

Yeah, you do hear some of that, but I think that the people that tend to get the most egregious attacks are often either folks have come out of the homosexual lifestyle,

24:50

I want to talk about it, or, you know, I think even Andrew Sullivan, who is a well -known homosexual author and blogger, has kind of said, hey, we got gay marriage, we need to kind of back off now, maybe not be going after the bakers and the florists.

25:05

He's been basically cast out of his own movement for not being, I guess, a purist or aggressive enough.

25:12

So I think those voices are out there, but they tend to get attacked and probably many intimidated into silence.

25:20

Yeah, just like a lot of conservative African -American individuals, the pro -life movement, for instance, among African -Americans seems to be largely avoided in the media, although there is a growing number of those who are given the opportunity to demonstrate and proclaim their views, a lot of it because of Fox News.

25:48

I don't agree with everything Fox News says or does, but at least that's one thing that you are hearing and seeing more people who are

25:55

African -American speaking in favor of conservative and biblical moral issues.

26:03

That also brings to mind, actually, the spanking of children, because it seems that every time

26:12

I've seen or heard this issue talked about in the public arena, African -Americans seem to be across the board, no matter how liberal they may be otherwise.

26:22

They seem to be very much in favor of corporal punishment in the home, and they know that that was a very valuable thing in their own lives, if you care to comment on that.

26:35

Yeah, I've definitely heard different podcasts on that, different discussions. Again, I think these issues are so closely tied together, we don't want to blur them because they are two separate issues, the homosexual agenda and those that are fighting to ban spanking in the home, but I see them as the same attack.

26:55

In other words, if we rightly understand Scripture that men are born depraved and in their sin, they oppose the

27:03

Word of God with everything they have. Paul writes in Romans 1 that they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, and all we're seeing are two arms of that same suppression of the truth, that as sinners kick against the

27:15

Word of God, they obviously want their views to be supreme. And unfortunately, it seems that the sinful mouths are crying the loudest, you know, for their approval.

27:27

And I just think these two issues tied together are just going to eradicate conservative people from this arena of, one, being able to care for their own children, and who knows where that will lead, but also certainly for caring for those that are in foster care and adoptive care.

27:43

And you hear a plea from the state saying, we need more people to sign up, we need more people, we have, you know, so many hundreds of children in foster care, and we don't have enough homes, and we don't have enough people wanting to adopt, and then conservative people step forward to try to enter that process, and they're immediately pushed out.

28:00

So the public hears, oh, there's not enough people signing up, and the Church should do their job, and behind the scenes, the

28:06

Church is being pushed away. And so I do want to, you know, cry out to the Church, wake up, because, you know, we're not...

28:14

the whole foster care system exists because the Church has failed. But now that the Church has failed, the state has picked up that mantle, and we're thinking that the state can be the answer of hope, when it was never designed by God to be the answer of hope, either in the discipline area for families or in the area of morality.

28:30

And so, whether you're talking about spanking or homosexuality, if we're looking to the government to be our voice of reason, we've already stepped off the right platform.

28:40

The Church is to be that wise voice in the community, and I agree with Andrew that not enough

28:45

Christians are seeing their calling or hearing their calling, or understanding the weight that's on the table.

28:51

Everybody thinks it is a myth, and it only involves a small percent of the population, but it really doesn't.

28:57

It's affecting everyone, and I think the changes that have taken place in the last 10 years in both of these issues are going to produce shocking fruit in the next 10 years, where you're going to have godly people maybe even possibly losing their children by their own private stances, because once these things become law, then that arm of the law, if they deem that you're being harmful to children, whether it's spanking or having certain religious views, you're going to lose certain rights, and I just think we're living in very strange times, and we need to, as the

29:33

Church, speak with love, speak with grace, but also not be ashamed to speak truthfully. Amen.

29:39

We have to get a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own or a comment, our email address is

29:46

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

29:52

Please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, or your country of residence, if you live outside the

29:58

USA, and you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable due to a certain position you may be in or circumstance that you're involved in.

30:09

We understand that, so you may feel free to be anonymous as well. Please only do so if it's necessary.

30:17

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're going to be right back with more on the homosexual agenda against Christian adoption.

30:30

I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study.

30:36

Used by pastors, scholars, and everyday readers, the NASB is widely embraced and trusted as a literal and readable

30:41

Bible translation. The NASB offers clarity and readability while maintaining high accuracy to the original languages which the

30:48

NASB is known for. The NASB is available in many editions like a topical reference Bible. Researched and prepared by biblical scholars devoted to accuracy, the new topical reference

30:57

Bible includes contemporary topics relevant to today's issues. From compact to giant print

31:03

Bibles, find an NASB that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible .com.

31:09

Trust, discover, and enjoy the NASB for yourself today. Go to nasbible .com.

31:14

That's nasbible .com. Tired of box store Christianity?

31:19

Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship?

31:27

And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.

31:33

Well, there's good news. Wading River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

31:43

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times.

31:52

631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us.

32:00

That's wrbc .us. Attention coin collectors and investors.

32:15

Long Island Galleries of Wading River, New York has brilliant uncirculated 19th century

32:21

Morgan silver dollars for only $54 per coin with free shipping and handling for a limited time.

32:28

There's a 40 coin limit, so order now while supplies last. Call 888 -260 -8111.

32:36

888 -260 -8111. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express welcome.

32:43

Price is subject to change, so call now at 888 -260 -8111. 888 -260 -8111.

32:52

If you prefer ordering your brilliant uncirculated 19th century Morgan silver dollars by check, mail it today to Long Island Galleries, 9

33:02

Susan Drive, Wading River, New York, 11792. That's Long Island Galleries, 9

33:09

Susan Drive, Wading River, New York, 11792. Remember they're only $54 per coin with free shipping and handling and a 40 coin limit.

33:19

New York State residents must add sales tax. Long Island Galleries is honored to sponsor

33:24

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. See the Long Island Galleries display ad at ironsharpensironradio .com.

33:32

Welcome back, this is Chris Arns and if you've just tuned us in, our guests today, our guests

33:37

I should say today, are Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute and also an anonymous guest and we are talking about the homosexual agenda against Christian adoption.

33:51

If you care to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

33:58

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name and your city and state and country of residence and you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable due to circumstances you're involved in.

34:13

How many states are you aware of that have been so overcome by liberalism in their local government that these things are occurring where Christians are actually being denied the privilege of adoption and foster parenting because of their views against the sin of homosexuality and also their views in favor of spanking their children who are endangering their own lives or behaving in a disobedient fashion?

34:48

I think because of this type of thing seems to be happening, it's not an official policy.

34:53

It's kind of under the radar behind the scenes. I don't have an answer to that question. I have heard from my friends at ADF that there are situations like this in other states, at least that they're involved in.

35:07

I can say on the public policy level, which is much easier to track because it's out there in the open, that there are two states right now which have laws that sort of are similar to this.

35:21

It's one that is pending right now in Massachusetts. I want to just explain it briefly for a minute because it's all tied together with this.

35:28

That's what we call a sexual orientation counseling ban. What it is, it's been passed in California and in New Jersey, signed into law by Governor Chris Christie despite my counterpart's protest down there in New Jersey.

35:41

It's a law that says if you're a licensed mental health professional you may not engage in conversion therapy.

35:48

Conversion therapy as defined by these laws is extremely broad and includes any treatment.

35:54

That would be just sort of talk therapy that would try to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a child, so someone under the age of 18.

36:06

The way these laws get passed is that the people who are pushing the laws roll out these extreme stories about electroshock therapy and nausea -inducing drugs and all sorts of craziness and say that there's abuse against LGBT youth who are being forced to try and convert and it doesn't work and they get these bills passed.

36:31

But in the bill themselves there's no mention of any of those treatments. There's no mention of electroshock therapy or no mention of drugs.

36:38

It just says any treatment, any therapies, which again could and probably most often does include simple talk therapy where a licensed mental health professional is trying to work through often a history of trauma or molestation of a child to help them explore why they're having certain, in many cases unwanted, same -sex desires or gender identity.

37:03

And so you have a situation where in California right now it would be perfectly legal for a licensed mental health therapist to tell a 12 year old girl who thinks she's a boy that yes you are a boy on the inside where it counts.

37:21

And so we're going to get you some puberty blockers, we're going to get you some testosterone injections, and we're going to sign you up for a double mastectomy in order to help you transition to male.

37:32

That's fine. No one breathes a word about child abuse or something like that, but if that same licensed mental health professional says that same 12 year old girl who has a perfectly healthy body but has gender identity disorder or dysphoria and feels on the inside that she's actually male, that mental health professional counselor just tries and talks through helping this girl literally feel comfortable in her own skin, that's child abuse.

37:56

That's illegal. The therapist loses their license and the family could potentially lose their child. And that same legislation is pending right now in Massachusetts and we're fighting hard to stop it, but that is sort of the external expression of this same ideology that any opposition to homosexual behavior and lifestyle and identity is homophobic and is therefore abusive.

38:22

This is just nothing short of sheer insanity and pure evil.

38:29

It's just utterly astonishing. Now is it legal for children who make these claims of believing they are really of the opposite gender than their body is indicating?

38:47

Is it legal for these things such as hormone treatments and surgery to begin to occur without the consent of parents?

38:58

That's a great question. Probably. I don't know. Well, I do know of I guess one example.

39:03

I had a father call me a daughter. He was divorced and I guess his ex -wife, the mother of their teenage daughter, must have been exclusive custody because his daughter transitioned to male, had both of her breasts removed, underwent hormone treatments and had a big sort of four -part series, glowingly documenting all this in the

39:30

Providence Journal in Rhode Island. And the father called me after it happened. I know it's too late now, but is there anything

39:38

I can do to try and stop this from going, from continuing? You know, he needs to see a family law attorney, but there's a situation where he had a biological father that,

39:47

I guess because of the divorce, could not stop this terrible mutilation of his daughter's body at the hands of mental health professionals and medical professionals, many of whom are here in Massachusetts.

40:04

And this stuff is getting pushed in Boston on young kids.

40:11

And interestingly, I guess despairingly, I would say that in that four -part series, no one mentioned the word child abuse or it wasn't even, you know, a counterpoint where someone said, well, maybe this is the best thing for the kid.

40:25

I mean, it was just the glowingly portrayed and received. And, you know, we saw that with the

40:32

Bruce Jenner transition. He's so courageous and this is wonderful.

40:40

You know, you can look at it a certain way with someone who's 60 years old at the end of their life, an adult. I still think it's a bad idea, obviously, but we're talking about kids, teenagers.

40:50

Yeah, it's interesting that Bruce Jenner, even though he is, I guess, legally a senior citizen, even he doesn't seem to really know for certain whether he's going full -fledged forward with surgery and all that.

41:06

I don't know if maybe something has changed in that regard, but I know that initially when he was being interviewed,

41:14

I guess it was Diane Sawyer that interviewed him, he was not certain whether he was going to go through with the full surgery.

41:23

And he's an adult man and we're expecting children to be able to make these decisions.

41:29

I mean, it's insane and I can't believe that there aren't numerous liberals and even people involved in homosexual activity who don't see this insanity of that.

41:43

In fact, I could just imagine that pedophiles around the globe are watching in the darkness with glee because what is the obvious next step?

41:59

If a child can make a decision about changing their physical makeup in regard to gender through surgery, why couldn't a child legally choose to have sex with an adult male or female?

42:14

Well, I think that is tragically where our culture is headed. I went to the

42:20

University of Minnesota Law School, graduated in 2003. At the time, sodomy was still a criminal offense in Texas.

42:26

It was later that year that it was overturned by the Supreme Court. But this was before same -sex marriage was even in Massachusetts.

42:34

I had a professor there who was an activist on these issues and he taught a class that I decided to attend.

42:43

But basically, he laid out for the course of that semester what we're seeing unfold in real time now. It's this, that we start with, not the

42:50

Bible, not traditional morality, but when it comes to laws and sexual ethics, our only standard is whatever two consenting adults want to do.

43:01

And if you ask the average person in America on the street, should two consenting adults be able to do what they want to do sexually?

43:07

Most people are going to reflexively say yes and not think through the logical reflection of that, which is first of all, two consenting adults.

43:17

Now we're talking about same -sex marriage, right? Because it could be a man or woman or a man and a man or two women. But also, it could be a brother and a sister or a daughter and a father or daughter and a mother.

43:27

So incest, right off the bat, is okay as well as same -sex marriage. And then, the rest of my classmates, not myself, but the rest of my classmates at this top 20 law school, so future attorneys and judges and legislators, also, well, yeah, okay, that's fine.

43:43

I mean, we have abortion and contraception, so whatever biologically related problems to incest that used to exist are no longer a concern.

43:54

We can get rid of those. So is there anything wrong with incest? Is there anything wrong with same -sex marriage? And the question became, well, why just two consenting adults?

44:01

Two seems kind of arbitrary. A lot of cultures across time and space have had polygamous relationships.

44:10

So why just two? That's arbitrary, kind of culturally elitist. So, okay, fine, polygamy. And that's probably what's next.

44:15

We've seen some of that already in some lawsuits out of Utah and Nevada with sister wives, that TV show.

44:23

But then we get to, well, what is an adult, right? I mean, you've got to be, what is it, 16 to drive, 18 to vote and join the military, 21 to drink, 25 to rent a car sometimes.

44:35

So the age of adulthood is sort of arbitrary. And as Alfred Kinsey and his ilk have taught us, children are sexual beings and have sexual feelings and therefore have the right to sexual expression and conduct.

44:49

And certainly the sex ed curriculum that's being pushed mostly by Planned Parenthood, in our public schools, teaches children at a very early age all kinds of sexual activities.

44:59

I've prosecuted sex crimes as a Marine Corps judge advocate for four years, and I've learned stuff that I didn't know about or couldn't have even imagined on my own from the seventh grade sex ed curriculum put up by Planned Parenthood.

45:12

So there is this whole underlying belief that children are sexual beings, have a right to sexual expression and sexual fulfillment, which is really one of the idolatries of our age.

45:26

And so, yes, sort of a long way of answering your question. Absolutely, we're going to see, I think, a push towards the acceptance of sexual behavior by minors, and not just, you know, 16 and 17, which is the legal age of consent in most places, but younger than that.

45:46

Chris, in a video from 2013, where LGBT supporters met with DCF workers, and one of the people posed a scenario where they said, you know, when your young boy comes home from school and says that he feels uncomfortable in these pants, we all know what that means, and we need to help these parents understand that that means that they're having an identity crisis, rather than their pants just uncomfortable.

46:14

And their solution to that thing was, you know, they need hormone therapy, they need to be encouraged in their journey to help them understand who they really are.

46:23

And I've heard, even from some local hospitals, that they're willing to start hormonal therapy as young as five years old on boys or girls that think that they're the opposite gender.

46:34

So, if there's parents that are lining up with this understanding and thinking, and their children make a statement, and the parents are for it, you can begin, as a young child, to start beginning to have hormonal therapy.

46:48

Like you said, at an age you don't even understand what life is, let alone understand what it means to be a male or a female.

46:55

And so we're being told now in the media that just because you have male parts doesn't make you a male. What makes you a male is what you believe, and to me that's just the opposite of reality.

47:05

We're being asked to think in a fantasy world, where fantasy becomes the reality, and reality gets pushed to the back burner.

47:11

And again, it does seem, as you said, just completely bizarre. It's like we're living in a nightmare.

47:17

But these things are, they're going full force behind the scenes, and it stuns me that more people don't see this as child abuse, and yet are quick to jump on the bandwagon, that if you call homosexuality a sin, that you're a hateful, horrible person.

47:32

In 2006, Massachusetts Department of Social Services elected

47:38

Parents of the Year to homosexual men who just adopted a small boy. They were Parents of the

47:44

Year, and again, by definition of what a parent is, I understand through the adoption process people can be, you know, single parents or different things, but if you're going to be a parent, meaning you can have a child, it takes a male and a female.

47:58

And yet we're redefining what all the home means, what parents mean, what it means to be a family, and the traditional views are seriously in the minority.

48:09

And again, it's stunning in a supposed culture that would still claim that we're a

48:14

Christian nation by majority of percentage, but not majority of practice, that's for sure.

48:20

And I agree with Andrew, there's these pushes happening behind the scenes, and again, the way that they're pushing them is to be broad.

48:27

They don't want to be specific, because then a law would be passed that you can't do shock therapy, which everybody would agree with.

48:33

But if a pastor walks up to someone who's struggling with sexual identity, and they say, well, the Bible says that, you know,

48:40

God created you, and knit you in your mother's womb, and he has a purpose for your life, that instantly can be called a hate crime, and dangerous to that child's well -being.

48:50

And I don't think people are getting the weight of what's being discussed. Yeah, we do have a listener in Clinton Township, Michigan, who says,

49:01

Albert Muller, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, condemned reparative therapy that aims to make gay and lesbian people straight, but he added that homosexual orientation can change through divine intervention.

49:17

And that was a comment more than a question. But it's obviously true that historic

49:22

Christianity, biblical Christianity, recognizes that we cannot, through any coercion, manipulation, force, violence, or any act of cruelty, transform anyone.

49:40

That's where the Church of Rome and some of the magisterial

49:46

Protestant churches failed miserably and grotesquely in the past, when they tortured and even executed people that refused to convert to their understanding of so -called

50:02

Christianity. Obviously, those of us who love and know the Bible know that it is an act that requires the divine intervention of God and His grace and mercy to supernaturally transform someone from a hellish or wicked or sinful background into one of a vessel of light.

50:29

Am I correct on that, brother? Yeah, definitely. I think people are trying to make words mean nothing, because they know the power of truth.

50:39

And again, truth is under attack in our society. People are being taught in school that there's no absolute truth, everything's being put up to what was the circumstances, what was happening.

50:49

So the more we throw out absolute truth, the more you can make a case for any bizarre thing to be considered normal.

50:55

And I think the Church needs to be clear. For any sinner that struggles with any sin, it takes an act of God's grace to change us.

51:03

We can't change ourselves. We were born loving sin, we're born dead in the spiritual sense to be able to function in right ways, and we praise

51:15

God that He raises sinners from the dead. We praise God that His Word guides us and directs us in the way of righteousness.

51:22

And again, I think that's the main issue that's under attack here, that they don't want words to mean what they mean, so they can use words to mean whatever they want them to mean.

51:32

And again, even using the word corporal punishment, the way it's used sometimes in the public sphere, they're trying to invoke these situations where you hear about people beating people with instruments to bring about harm to the child, rather than just saying spanking, because it sounds much more weighty.

51:52

And I have nothing wrong with the phrase corporal punishment, but you can see that the way that they're using it, because they want it to be the shock in our case, rather than a parent just taking a child aside and saying, you know, this is how we're going to remind you that you shouldn't do these things, and to help you to understand what right and wrong is.

52:09

And again, I am against child abuse in any form, but what's being called child abuse in so many issues is not child abuse, but how do you make that clear when words no longer have meaning?

52:20

And it's tough. You know, it would probably be helpful for the two of you to make it clear what kind of spanking and punishment you are clearly talking about that is not only biblical, but should be the practice of every

52:37

Christian home, where there's children involved in the home. Yeah, I think, you know, the

52:44

Bible teaches that, in Proverbs and other places, to spare the rod is to hate your son and to discipline is to love your son.

52:52

As we said before, I just think spanking is to be something that's done in gentleness, something that's done in love.

52:59

The Bible talks about, you know, our Heavenly Father disciplining us in love because He loves us, because we're

53:04

His children. Discipline's never meant to be something that we do, you know, to force, you know, an endgame, you know, through evil, but just to turn the sinner's heart, to remind them, you know, that what just happened offended my family, offended my siblings, but more importantly, what

53:23

I just did offended Almighty God. And again, I am against child abuse.

53:28

I would say that spanking is to be done in gentleness and love. It's not something that's to be done that brings bodily harm, but it's just to be a reminder that there's boundaries.

53:39

I'm hearing inside DCF that children that go through trauma, you should never tell them no.

53:44

You should never make them feel unloved by telling that they did something wrong. Well, how is that going to work if you raise up children and never tell them no?

53:54

They're going to be fired from their first job when they try to steal from their company, and the boss says, that's unacceptable here.

53:59

And they go, well, wait a minute, I've been allowed to do whatever I want. And you see these children that have no boundaries, and they're not loved.

54:07

They're petrified. Children need boundaries. They need to understand what's safe for them to do, what's harmful for them to do.

54:15

No one would call somebody hateful if you dove in and grabbed a child to keep them from running out in front of a train or a car, and yet that's what we're being led to understand in society, that if you tell a child no, you're hurting their psyche.

54:28

You're causing them to feel like they're not a human being. And I just think we're missing the whole point of what discipline is designed to do.

54:36

And again, we have to be very careful that we're not affirming that someone can, you know, take a stick and beat a child and cause them to bleed and cause bodily harm.

54:44

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about gentle, loving discipline that trains a child when they're young.

54:50

And again, I think spanking is meant for young children. I don't think you spank older children. You can speak to older children.

54:56

You can reason with them. But I do think that the Bible talks about disciplining a child in the way that they should go.

55:02

And when they're older, they won't stray from it. We have to set the foundations for our children in society, saying, no, no, no, no foundations for children.

55:09

They get to choose their own way. They get to choose what's right and what's wrong. And mentally, they don't have the ability as young children to do that.

55:15

They need to be told what's right and what's wrong. And no longer is that a loving thing. You know, that's considered, you know, you're inflicting your views on these people and you're hateful and narrow minded.

55:26

And it's bizarre to hear the arguments that are made against parents trying to love their children.

55:33

Yeah, and it's just a farce because the leftist agenda is to tell everybody what is right and wrong.

55:41

They just have a 180 degree different understanding of that because the Bible is not their blueprint.

55:49

And how are you supposed to discipline your little boy if he beats up the little boy down the road who says he's gay?

55:58

Where does the leftist come down on that? Where does the homosexual activist come down on that?

56:04

How are you supposed to correct your son for beating up the kid who claims that he's gay?

56:10

So there you go. Obviously, they're going to say that you shouldn't just sit back and let your child make his own decision on that.

56:16

They're obviously going to want you to do everything possible to stop your child within reason and without harm to your own child also.

56:25

But this is just a double standard in it. And they know that it's fallacious. It's only when it comes to their own agenda that they want these things indoctrinated in the minds of the populace.

56:39

And that reminds me of another thing. Are either of you aware of feminists who are doing anything to stop the insanity of depriving babies and little children of mothers?

56:58

Basically, the legality of two men raising a child without a mother in the home, you're basically saying, it's not important to have a mother in the home.

57:11

It might be a nice thing, but it's not important. Not important enough, where we shouldn't permit two men to raise a baby and a child.

57:19

Have you heard any feminists protesting this? Yeah, I have not. It doesn't mean those voices aren't out there.

57:25

But I think again, like the voices of folks in homosexual lifestyle who did not support gay adoption, they kind of get drowned out or shouted down by those movements.

57:38

And I think largely the feminist movement is tied to the LGBT movement. So that would be seen as a betrayal of that ideology.

57:47

Right. Which is the same thing that the same reason why the feminists appear to be silent in relatively silent in their rebuke of Hillary Clinton as she runs for president, knowing that she allowed her husband to get away with the abuse of women, even in his office as president.

58:12

But we're gonna be going to another break right now as we come to the top of the second hour of this broadcast.

58:21

If you'd like to join us on the air, please email us at chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We do have a couple of listeners waiting for their questions to be read on air and we'll get to you as soon as possible in the second hour of the broadcast.

58:36

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

58:43

And as always, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside the

58:49

USA, you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable. Don't go away.

58:55

We're gonna be right back with the homosexual agenda against Christian adoption.

59:05

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

59:13

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.

59:21

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

59:27

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

59:40

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

59:48

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com. That's solid -ground -books .com

59:56

and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

01:00:02

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.

01:00:16

As a membership organization, we help Christians be wise with money and live generously every day.

01:00:23

And for the fourth year in a row, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the

01:00:28

Ethisphere Institute, a leading international think tank dedicated to the creation, advancement, and sharing of best practices in business ethics.

01:00:37

Contact me, Mike Gallagher, financial consultant, at 717 -254 -6433.

01:00:44

Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the

01:00:49

Thrivant Difference. Lending faith, finances, and generosity.

01:01:01

That's the Thrivant story. We were made to thrive.

01:01:14

Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

01:01:22

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

01:01:29

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing.

01:01:37

We're a diverse family of all ages, enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

01:01:43

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

01:01:49

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org.

01:01:59

That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, if you've just tuned us in. We are discussing the homosexual agenda against Christian adoption and we have a couple of guests on the air discussing this very vital and disturbing issue.

01:02:16

Andrew Beckwith, who's the president of Massachusetts Family Institute, is with us and we also have an anonymous guest for the second time on Iron Sharpens Iron and it is because of circumstances that this guest is involved in that it is nothing but wisdom that demands that he remain anonymous at this point and we hope at some future point he can truly reveal his identity and the reason that he remained anonymous today.

01:02:47

But the email address again is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:02:53

We do have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania who asks, are you aware of any situations where parents had their children removed from the home that they either already adopted or were their own biological children but the children were removed because of the parents views against homosexuality?

01:03:22

Yeah, that's sort of a $64 ,000 question and I don't know of a situation that exactly parallels that.

01:03:31

However, there was a very high -profile parentectomy, is the clinical term used, as horrific as that is.

01:03:39

It happened here in the Boston area a year ago that I think makes you make all of us concerned because, as the individual points out, the

01:03:50

Department of Children and Families of Massachusetts and their counterparts in all the states across the country are not just the organizations that decide which homes are appropriate to place children into, but also which homes are appropriate to remove children from, biological children from.

01:04:06

We had a case, actually a Connecticut family who came up to Boston for medical treatment, sort of a rare mitochondrial disorder.

01:04:16

It's sort of a newly diagnosed, recognized disorder and it was a 14 -year -old girl, sorry, 15 -year -old girl,

01:04:25

Justina Pelletier. You may recognize the name. She went to get treatment. She's being treated at Tufts.

01:04:32

It was a major university -affiliated medical research hospital being treated by some experts on this mitochondrial disorder at Tufts Hospital, was transferred to Boston Children's Hospital to see a specialist there that her primary doctor at Tufts had a relationship with and wanted her to see for one of her issues.

01:04:51

She goes to Boston Children's Hospital, never actually sees the doctor she was referred to there, was was seen by some psychologists who determined that her disorder was on her head, which is a result of her parents being,

01:05:06

I guess, psychologically abusive to her, and they ended up taking her and putting her in DCF custody for,

01:05:14

I think was 14 months, so over a year. Yeah, for part of that, in a psychological ward, she was allowed to see her parents,

01:05:24

I think, once a week for an hour under the police, the state police supervision.

01:05:30

It was an absolute nightmare. Finally, the father, although he was under a gag order from the probate court judge, finally went public, went to the

01:05:40

Court of Public Opinion where it was sort of his last resort and got on Mike Huckabee and got picked up to the national media, and I worked here with pro -feminist legislators to kind of try and lobby the governor of the prior administration.

01:05:55

Here in Massachusetts, when finally she was released, it just became too much of an embarrassment to the administration that essentially kidnapped this girl, but it stands for a couple of things.

01:06:06

One, you hear about DCF taking a child out based on mental health professionals' assessment, and you had the allegations of abuse, and once the

01:06:18

Pelletier family was sort of labeled as, oh, they're abusive, the people I talked to in the halls of power who were otherwise sympathetic, their initial response, and I get it,

01:06:30

I was there too, is, oh, there must be something going on, right? There's abuse in the family.

01:06:35

That word is so loaded, it made them like lepers, and fortunately for those parents of Pelletiers, they had been working with Liberty Council, which is similar to ADF, to Alliance Defending Freedom as a

01:06:49

Christian legal center, and Matt Staver worked with them, and I was able to coordinate a call between some of the pro -feminist legislators who were really hesitant about getting involved because of the allegations of abuse, and the attorney at Liberty Council who had vetted them, did the background research to make sure that there wasn't abuse, and so that finally these legislators were willing to kind of step out and speak vocally and advocate for this family, but you can see how if some doctor at a major hospital or a psychologist says these parents are abusing the child, you don't even have to go into any detail.

01:07:25

That allegation just is enough to kind of shut down the whole conversation. People kind of want to walk away and not get involved, and the only abuse that was alleged was that they were trying to get too much medical treatment for her.

01:07:39

What was the disorder? What was the nature of it? Mitochondrial disorder, and as best understanding of an attorney, not a doctor, but some of the cells in her body would kind of have a brownout.

01:07:50

They would either only partially function or stop functioning for a period of time, and she really had trouble digesting food.

01:07:58

She had a couple surgeries, one which actually found a physical deformity in,

01:08:04

I think, her digestive tract, so she was clearly not making this stuff up. It wasn't all in her head as a result of her parents, you know, abusing her or, you know, pretending there was something wrong with her in order to get attention.

01:08:17

There actually was something physically wrong with her, and the second surgery was to add a little port, I think, in her intestine to help flush her digestive system because it had trouble functioning on its own, but she went from, and there's pictures over, ice skating backwards, you know, doing figure eights and stuff like that, to being in a wheelchair a year later after being in DCF custody in a psychological ward, not being able to see her parents.

01:08:41

She was Catholic, so not being able to go to mass on a regular basis. It was just an absolute, you know, parents' nightmare, so you could see how the system would work in a similar situation if parents were accused of abusing their child, you know, through allegations of homophobia, and that is why we're really fighting against this this counseling ban bill because, this is sort of the big tie -in for me as an attorney, but in the peddling legislation, you have this conversion therapy listed as child abuse right after sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and it was neglect, ironically, that the pelleteers were charged with as abuse, even though they were charged with giving her too much medical treatment, they were then charged with neglect, and that was under section 51 of the applicable law, and so there's article 51 report, which is what the hospital sent to DCF, which instigated the whole process of her being removed from the home, and it's that same section 51 that they want to add sexual orientation change efforts to.

01:09:53

So if you take your child to a licensed mental health professional to help them, again, feel comfortable in their own skin if they've got a gender identity issue, rather than having to do hormone treatment, that is child abuse in the same category of law that allowed

01:10:08

DCF to take this daughter away from her parents for 14 months. That's the bill that's pending.

01:10:15

That's why I connect the dots. You feel like you're wearing a tinfoil hat sometimes if they want to take your kids away, you know, and promote them into homosexual lifestyle, but the evidence is out there, and the legal framework, you know, is ready to be passed by the state legislators who were fighting against that, and if you go back to the video that my anonymous friend here mentioned earlier,

01:10:39

I've seen it as well, and in there you have, it's like a panel discussion between DCF representatives and members of the

01:10:47

LGBT community talking about their LGBT liaison program, which is basically kind of like having gay commissars approving the actions of DCF, and they talk about how

01:11:01

LGBTQ youth should intentionally be placed with gay parents so they can serve as mentors, and even more disturbing is they talk about children who haven't, quote, come out yet that, you know, foster care agents, if they think a child is gay, and I don't know if you've heard this, but kids will say, well he's gay, he just doesn't know it yet, right?

01:11:25

So see if other people determining what someone's sexual orientation is or will be, including potentially

01:11:31

DCF agents, so if they see a foster kid, well he's gay, he doesn't really know it yet, so let's put him with a gay family to encourage that.

01:11:42

Oh, this is just so twisted, I can barely restrain my vocabulary right now.

01:11:49

You know, it's so interesting that the liberal agenda that was dominant in the media for most of my life,

01:12:03

I was born in the early 60s and by the 70s when liberalism really started to make great headway into the media, leaps and bounds, the agenda used to be, and I'm sure you guys recognize this, that the liberal concept was, it's so horrible of people to put a gay label on a young boy because he likes to play with dolls, and a young girl because she likes to use her brother's trucks in the backyard, and that was considered horrible.

01:12:48

It was so horrible to call a young boy gay because he likes ballet and things like that.

01:12:55

Now it seems that the reverse is happening. The liberals are saying, he's gay, look at him, he's playing with dolls and he likes ballet, and the girl's a lesbian, look at her, she's playing with trucks in the backyard, and she likes building tree forts, and you know, she's a tomboy and likes sports.

01:13:17

It seems like the leftist rhetoric is reversing itself on this. Am I right here, am

01:13:23

I delusional? You're right, tragically, or maybe that same tomboy is actually a boy, is just transgender, and somehow, you know, a five or six year old is supposed to figure this stuff out and make decisions that even

01:13:38

Bruce Jenner is unwilling to make at this point. So really, I have to keep going back to Romans chapter 1, where Paul talks about thinking themselves wise, they became as fools.

01:13:50

Mm -hmm. Air -phrasing, but when I see folks with PhDs, doctors, and psychologists from Harvard talks, testifying at the

01:14:00

State House in favor of this type of legislation, that's only going to make sense.

01:14:05

You know, they're thinking themselves wise, they became as fools, because it is mad. And I even say that the video takes it even farther to say, since we don't know who will come out, we have to completely eliminate anyone with conservative values, because if we don't, then that poor child will be stuck in an abusive home if they come out a year after they're placed, or six months after they're placed.

01:14:25

And their agenda is to so train people in the foster adoptive care system that they only think one way, and they basically said in the video, if anyone thinks differently, please don't even apply.

01:14:38

You know, they are intentionally trying to make everyone in the system think the exact same way.

01:14:45

Again, they don't want to just be left alone, they don't want to merely have the freedom to do what they want. They want approval, they want praise, they want people to applaud, they want people to, you know, just absolutely join their corner.

01:14:57

And if you can't join their corner, then it's not that you have a difference of opinion, you're an enemy. Yes. And I also think that, you know, talking what we talked about a few minutes ago, parents are automatically guilty, not innocent until proven guilty, but guilty.

01:15:12

If someone files an abusive charge, they're automatically guilty until we can sort it out.

01:15:17

So you can see how dangerous this is, that all someone has to do, whether it be a doctor or a teacher, if they file a 51a, if they file a charge of abuse against the parents, they're automatically guilty in the public eye, in the legal eye, and then they have to, you know, appeal their way and do different things to get out of it with the pelleteers.

01:15:37

I said to somebody when it was happening, I said, I would go out of my mind if somebody took my child away for 14 months.

01:15:42

You know, that's my own flesh and blood. I would lay my life down and literally be killed to protect them, and now you're telling me

01:15:49

I have to sit by and let all these people, as Andrew said, that proclaim to be wise and yet they're fools, examine them without your permission, give them drugs without your permission, do whatever they want to them without permission, because they're the higher authorities.

01:16:05

So these different groups, they're almost becoming little gods, that if the system says that these people have the right, that they have the best knowledge about children, then we're going to submit to that, even if the evidence is against that.

01:16:17

And that's the part that I think just starts to be almost like fiction, that you're making these things up, that these people legitimately came up from another state to do what they thought was best for their child, and then they were told, not only are you not doing what's best for your child, but we think you're evil.

01:16:34

And then eventually they were proved not to be evil, and their child was given back. But we're talking 14 months of a child's life lived inside of a hospital.

01:16:43

That's not good for anybody, and yet that was considered, this is the wisest decision, let's just take a slow course of action, and if the media hadn't jumped on this, if people hadn't pushed this issue, who knows where that girl would have ended up.

01:16:56

It's just shocking. I stand in awe of, again, the foolishness that's being applauded as wisdom in our society, and it seems like the church is silent.

01:17:07

I haven't heard a lot of people stand up and say, you know, this isn't wise, and it's almost everyone's afraid of losing something, rather than being willing to lose everything.

01:17:18

Isn't that what Jesus called us to do? That the greatest act of love is to lay your life down for another?

01:17:24

When did the church become self -preserving? The church is to be there as a beacon of hope, as a beacon of life, as a beacon of truth, even if it costs you your life.

01:17:33

And I just think that behind this scene of wickedness is a God shaking the church to say, you know, who's going to stand up to be my child?

01:17:42

Who's going to stand up to be the voice of reason? And it's going to cost some people. And as I said before, I know people that have been forbidden.

01:17:50

You know, you just watch their joy, thinking about adopting or foster caring and taking care of children, and you watch their own children thriving and flourishing, and you watch their love between them as a husband and wife, and all of a sudden somebody comes along and says, oh, you're unfit parents.

01:18:04

We can't give you a child. And watch, you know, how devastated they were when that proclamation happened.

01:18:10

And they start second -guessing themselves, like, what are we doing wrong? Are we doing what's right? And it's stunning.

01:18:17

I agree with you. I oftentimes don't have words to put feelings, you know, to words when you hear about these things, because it's just so bizarre.

01:18:25

You know, I've heard from some law enforcement officials that when police officers are called to respond to a crime, that one of the most dangerous places they can ever be called to, their active duty to, is a domestic violence call in a home.

01:18:57

And I have heard that that multiplies many times over when you're talking about two men who are involved in a lover's quarrel, and domestic violence ensues.

01:19:12

Now, I don't know how, if that's just the typical, across the board, everywhere in the country or everywhere in the world, but I'm wondering, are parents, or should

01:19:26

I say, are two men or two women who are acting as parents of an adopted child, are they being sheltered in ways in regard to prosecution from their own abuse of children?

01:19:44

I mean, you were just mentioning how easy it is for God -fearing and Bible -believing Christian parents to be successfully prosecuted and persecuted for charges of abuse of children in the home when all they were doing was obeying the scriptures and demonstrating genuine love.

01:20:08

But what about the reverse? You know of parents, and I hate to use the word parents, but those acting as parents who are of the same gender, have there been incidents of them getting away with genuine abuse of children?

01:20:25

That's a hard question. I don't have the answer to it. I think it's because this is so new.

01:20:31

And it's also sheltered, as I was saying. I think you can probably assume that it is.

01:20:36

I mean, a couple of thoughts. One, you have Mark Regnerus, got a Texas, you know, brought all kinds of hate upon himself as a researcher when he published, about a year ago, probably the best and most comprehensive research to date on the impact of same -sex parenting on children.

01:20:55

And it was that, you know, on a variety of metrics, children did worse when raised by same -sex parents as opposed to a mother and a father, particularly a biological mother and father.

01:21:06

We did a research report here last year in Massachusetts on the problem of fatherlessness. And one of the ways we were able to track that is just the basic census data that shows when you have children who are in a married home with both a mom and a dad present, that they just, they do better across the board, whether it's academics, physical health, they have very little chance of being in poverty, that marriage, traditional marriage, is really the reading, as Senator Monahan said, one of the, is the original

01:21:40

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. And it really can't be beat statistically, and that's just the facts.

01:21:47

Nevertheless, we see a real push, as my friend here mentioned, to place children with not only single parents, but same -sex parents, when we know at a minimum that children do best and deserve a mother and a father.

01:22:04

So, you know, whether there's acts of abuse by same -sex couples that are being, you know, covered up for ideological purposes,

01:22:11

I can't say for certainty. But we do know that the powers that be are ignoring the uncontestable facts of where children do best, and placing them in homes, they're ideologically motivated.

01:22:25

Yeah, well, I happen to know firsthand, at least, that there have been horrific acts of violence perpetrated against Christians by homosexuals that the news media refused to recognize and publicize.

01:22:42

One in particular that developed into a book that perhaps you too may recognize, maybe you don't, but there's a book called

01:22:51

When the Wicked Sees a City, and it's written by Chuck McElhaney, who was at the time pastor of the

01:23:01

First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, which is an Orthodox Presbyterian congregation.

01:23:09

And back in the late 70s, early 80s, that church excommunicated an unrepentant homosexual who was the church organist.

01:23:20

And when the church organist sued the church and lost, the homosexual activists in San Francisco unleashed their fury, starting with hundreds of threats of violence left on answering machines of the pastor and his wife, finally consummating in their home being set on fire while the pastor and his wife and children were asleep in bed.

01:23:49

And they escaped, thankfully, because God and his providence woke up Pastor Chuck so he could see the flames reflecting on his window, and they escaped without harm.

01:24:03

But the news media, the secular news media, none of them covered this story, and I didn't even hear about it until I saw it on the

01:24:13

Christian media and read Pastor McElhaney's book. But it's just amazing that if that had been the reverse, if that had been a group of professing

01:24:22

Christians like the Nuts from the God Hates Fags group or some other group that is obviously not

01:24:31

Christian in reality, but if they had unleashed their fury on a homosexual couple and set their house on fire, you would hear about that on the news, on television globally, you know, and you would hear about it often.

01:24:46

So there's just an obvious bias that the media has. Even as you were saying, anonymous, as you were saying earlier, that we are not being asked to merely accept those involved in homosexuality as equals.

01:25:06

We are being demanded to celebrate them. And it's one of the things that it makes that very evident is even on the news, on the secular news channels, whenever you see the announcement of a celebrity marrying somebody of the same gender, the newscaster will always have a beaming smile of approval on their face.

01:25:34

They never report this event neutrally, just as a news story.

01:25:40

There is always the signs of glee and approval behind it whenever this happens, even to the point where many newscasters congratulate the couple on their marriage.

01:25:53

So, I mean, it's just blatantly obvious that it is not a myth invented by conservatives that the media has a liberal agenda.

01:26:01

Oh, you just look at how shows have changed. I mean, if you roll the time back, you know, homosexuals on TV shows were the joke, were the pun, were the, you know, the scapegoat of the situation.

01:26:14

And slowly, you watch the pendulum swing. Now they're the hero. Now they're the main character. And again, when they were the pun and the joke, that was done intentionally to invoke sympathy.

01:26:24

And you just look at all the new shows that are coming out, almost every media outlet that puts out, you know, shows or programs or movies, they're all either bending to the sway of the populace to put a homosexual character in, or they're joyfully doing it because now they're getting to do what they wanted to do with no restrictions.

01:26:46

And it's just stunning how the media has jumped on this. And I think if you ever tried to make the argument the other way, there just wouldn't be enough facts.

01:26:54

It's just everywhere where this is being approved of. And you even see it in the realm of Christianity.

01:27:00

You have different denominations that are bending over backwards to say, we now give our approval.

01:27:05

We're hanging out rainbow flags or doing different things because they want to be liked. And again, the

01:27:11

Church was never called to be liked. The Church was called to be the means by which truth and wisdom and God -honoring actions were to be promoted.

01:27:23

And it's amazing how the sway of personal opinion has changed. And again, it's not in a godly way.

01:27:30

It's in an ungodly way. And again, if you look at like ESPN, you know, they gave Man of the Year or Person of the

01:27:37

Year to Bruce Jenner and gave like an hour tribute. I mean, you don't ever do that with another athlete that, you know, his athletic abilities ended a long time ago.

01:27:48

And yet because he was brave and came out and made his life public, they made him a hero.

01:27:55

And our culture has just lost their moral bearing. And yet, it seems like the culture stands at a distance and applauds.

01:28:05

And again, the Church being silent is not the right option. I had heard that Bob Costas objected to Bruce Jenner winning that.

01:28:14

Are you aware of that? And did he stick to his guns on that? I did not hear that.

01:28:19

All I heard was all the praise. I didn't hear any public, you know, voice of objection from the sports community.

01:28:26

Yeah, and I'm not saying that Bob Costas subjected to Bruce Jenner winning it because he is a so -called transgendered individual, but just because he recognized that there were people that were more worthy of it, that got passed by on it.

01:28:44

But I'll have to look that up and verify that. Before we go to the break, I'd like to ask you a question of a listener so then you could, you know, ponder on it and answer it when we return.

01:28:57

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York says, what's your advice on how to respond when a family member identifies as being a homosexual and he or she and their partner adopt a child and successfully bring that child into the home?

01:29:24

How are you as Christians supposed to respond to that family member? Obviously, if you go overboard in your opposition to that, you may wind up getting your yourselves cut off from that child's life who needs

01:29:41

Christian influence more than ever. But you could think about that during the break and respond when we come back.

01:29:49

And this is our final break. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, this is your last opportunity.

01:29:55

We've got about a half hour left and the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:30:02

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions right after these messages, so don't go away.

01:30:10

Are you a Christian looking to align your faith and finances? Then you'll want to check out Thriving Financial.

01:30:16

We're not your typical financial services provider. We're a not -for -profit Fortune 500 organization that helps our nearly 2 .4

01:30:24

million members be wise with money. We provide guidance that reflects your values so you can protect what matters most.

01:30:31

We help members live generously and strengthen the communities where they live, work, and worship. Learn more about the

01:30:38

Thriving story by contacting me, Mike Gallagher, financial consultant at 717 -254 -6433.

01:30:46

Again, 717 -254 -6433. Lending faith, finances, and generosity.

01:31:02

That's the Thriving story. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

01:31:20

Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted.

01:31:28

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own. You need to read.

01:31:35

Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart.

01:31:41

The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

01:31:52

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered,

01:31:58

Christ -exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at Solid -Ground -Books .com.

01:32:05

That's Solid -Ground -Books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

01:32:14

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Attention coin collectors and investors.

01:32:26

Long Island Galleries of Wading River, New York has brilliant uncirculated 19th century

01:32:32

Morgan silver dollars for only $54 per coin, with free shipping and handling for a limited time.

01:32:39

There's a 40 coin limit, so order now while supplies last. Call 888 -260 -8111.

01:32:47

888 -260 -8111. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express welcome.

01:32:54

Price is subject to change, so call now at 888 -260 -8111. 888 -260 -8111.

01:33:03

If you prefer ordering your brilliant uncirculated 19th century Morgan silver dollars by check, mail it today to Long Island Galleries, 9

01:33:13

Susan Drive, Wading River, New York, 11792. That's Long Island Galleries, 9

01:33:20

Susan Drive, Wading River, New York, 11792. Remember, they're only $54 per coin, with free shipping and handling and a 40 coin limit.

01:33:30

New York State residents must add sales tax. Long Island Galleries is honored to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:33:37

See the Long Island Galleries display ad at ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:33:43

Welcome back, this is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned in for the last 90 minutes, we have been discussing the homosexual agenda against Christian adoption with our guests,

01:33:55

Andrew Beckwith, President of Massachusetts Family Institute, and an anonymous guest, and we are taking your emails with questions at chrisarns and at gmail .com.

01:34:08

And if you could, Andrew and anonymous comment on our guest

01:34:15

CJ in Lindenhurst, New York's question on advice on how to deal with a family member who is actively involved in homosexuality and has adopted a child or children.

01:34:28

I think there's no blanket answer for this, you can't say that every circumstance is the way you handle it.

01:34:34

I think if the person is a professing Christian, it would be handled differently than if the person is outright saying that they're an unbeliever.

01:34:42

I think that the church has failed miserably in calling sin sin inside the church, therefore it puts undue harm on families.

01:34:51

They have to step up and be the church where the church has failed, but I think that if someone's professing to be a

01:34:57

Christian and living in sin, whether it's murder, whether it's being a thief, or whether it's being a liar, whether it's being a homosexual, the church has a responsibility to call that person to repentance.

01:35:09

It doesn't agree with their faith claim. And when you get this far down the line, not only is this person homosexual, but now they've,

01:35:16

I think the questioner said that they're married to their partner and now they're adopting a child. So the answer that should have come, if this person is a professing

01:35:26

Christian, should have been much longer ago in the area of sin in his personal lifestyle, and then to join in a union that God forbids is another step of sin that should have been dealt with, and then all of a sudden a child's involved and now somebody wants to make a statement.

01:35:44

And that's where it's very sad. I've seen people be a healthy part of a church. They have a friend that's going to be joined together with another homosexual or another lesbian, and they say, well,

01:35:56

I have to go to show my friend support in this marriage. And they come for advice, and you tell them you can't.

01:36:02

You know, when the person doing the ceremony says, does anybody have a reason why they shouldn't be joined? If you sit in silence, then you're declaring to everyone on your right and your left in front of you,

01:36:12

I think this is okay. And I think that's where the Church has failed miserably, that we are to be loving.

01:36:17

But part of being loving is calling sin, sin, and righteousness, righteousness. And again, if the

01:36:23

Church is unwilling to call sin, sin, then how are you supposed to come in, you know, down the line here and say, wait a minute, you shouldn't be allowed to adopt.

01:36:30

Well, how did he get that far? How did he go so far off the rail that now's the time to say something, because now you're thinking about, whoa, this is due to the child.

01:36:39

Well, what did it do to this person? You know, was the family silent during all those things? So I heard a message one time, make that distinction between, you know, is the person a professing believer?

01:36:50

Is the person, you know, professing that they're an unbeliever? And our response needs to be different.

01:36:56

And again, I wish churches would get back to the basics that the Church discipline is a part of the walk of faith.

01:37:03

Everybody hears Church discipline now, and it's seen as a four -letter word, like, oh, that's a horrible, hateful thing to do.

01:37:09

But God designs Church discipline to lead His people to repentance. That's why there's multiple steps. It's not, you take somebody in the back room and kick them out of the

01:37:16

Church. That's not Church discipline. That's sinful on your behalf. So if someone is professing to be a

01:37:21

Christian, and one of their friends goes to them in love and says, hey, brother, sister, you keep going on this path, your life's going to end in destruction.

01:37:29

And if they don't listen, then you take others with you and confront them, you know, and make the same plea that you're calling them back from destruction.

01:37:37

And again, that's where I want to encourage the Church, is that we aren't to be the judge and jury outside the

01:37:43

Church. God says He'll do that. God says your responsibility is to judge those inside of the Church.

01:37:49

And I just see so much finger -pointing back, way back, I don't know, probably 20 years ago now, the

01:37:54

Southern Baptist Convention put out a statement saying that no Southern Baptist should go to Disney because Disney is allowing homosexual, you know, events there, and we should boycott it.

01:38:04

And it's like, wait a minute, what about all the sin inside the Southern Baptist Convention? Why are we not supporting there?

01:38:11

And again, I think Jesus is clear. By our love for each other, the world will know that we're His. And again, if we can't start at the beginning stages of sin to plead with somebody to not to destroy their life, then to try to answer the question ten steps down the line is going to seem very hypocritical.

01:38:26

And again, I'm not trying to avoid the issue. I'm saying it's a weighty issue that the understand that there is a secular church called

01:38:37

Christianity that has nothing to do with Christianity that is giving its hearty approval to homosexuality and to other sins.

01:38:43

Homosexuality is not the only sin that secular Christianity is giving its approval to. And the true body of believers needs to be wise, needs to be loving, needs to be caring, and how you love that person will be determined by who they claim to be.

01:38:58

And I think, again, Jesus was very loving to those sinners that were outside of the body and called them back from their sin very differently than He approached the

01:39:07

Pharisees and the Sadducees who were leading the people astray with their wicked teaching. And I just think the

01:39:12

Church needs to function in that realm. So I hope that helps, but it sounds like I'm sidestepping it, but I'm not.

01:39:19

I just think there are other steps that need to come first. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says,

01:39:30

As a regular listener of Iron Sharpens Iron, I have noticed that you have had guests on who have a different opinion with each other on the role of the church in the political arena.

01:39:45

While all Christians I've heard you interview say that individual

01:39:51

Christian people have every right and duty to be in some fashion involved in the political arena, if it even means at the very least voting.

01:40:04

However, you have had people on that disagree about the Church's function as an institution.

01:40:11

Some even very conservative and theologically faithful pastors and leaders believe that it is not the role and function of the local church as an institution to be giving their voice to these political issues.

01:40:28

What are your guests' opinions on this? I'd be happy to talk about that. It's something

01:40:33

I deal with regularly, talking to pastors and trying to encourage them to be salt and light to our culture.

01:40:41

Our culture is informed by, as well as informs, our laws. What I tell them is that God's word is true for everyone, whether they go to church and believe it or not.

01:40:57

He's the creator and sustainer of all things. If we really want to love our neighbor and want what's best for them, we should want to be a positive, godly influence in our culture, in all areas of culture, including the laws.

01:41:11

If we abandon those to people who aren't Christians, then you can imagine what type of laws you would get.

01:41:17

That's going to have a negative impact on everyone. For example, when I was prosecuting a case, there was a young boy who was molested by his stepfather.

01:41:28

I was prosecuting the stepfather. His stepfather was in the military service at the time.

01:41:36

We were not able to use the homosexual pornography that we found on the stepfather's computer as evidence that he had a propensity for this certain act that he did to his victim's stepson because homosexuality is now not only allowed but promoted and celebrated in the military.

01:41:57

That's a result of elections and of legal changes. Secondly, we weren't able to use the virtual child pornography that we found on the computer again to show that the father had a motivation to do this act because although we had passed a law outlawing virtual child pornography, also digitally enhanced or changed images of adults to make it look like it was children, that's not illegal to possess or create anymore because the

01:42:27

Supreme Court, the result of political appointments, the result of elections, had determined in a

01:42:32

Supreme Court case that virtual child pornography was protected under the First Amendment. Then when this child, they tried to keep it confidential, but word got out to local papers so kids at school could connect the dots as to who this child was and what had happened, guaranteed that teenage boys are going to say what they're going to say when they hear about this type of thing and probably help convince this kid that he's really gay.

01:42:59

He just doesn't know it yet that it's his fault his stepfather did that or some craziness like that. So he's going to go and seek help as a result of our culture not being salted sufficiently by people of faith.

01:43:12

If there is a teacher in that school who has access to this boy who is a Christian and wants to counsel him in a godly way and help him, he or she can prevent him from doing so and probably lose their job.

01:43:24

And yet the GLBT group is going to be there, sponsored by the school, promoted by the school, and we welcome this boy with open arms.

01:43:33

Given that environment and those influences, it's entirely possible he'll embrace a lifestyle based on the molestation and the brokenness and confusion.

01:43:42

So when and if he staggers into a church 20 years later, the church will bear responsibility for all that brokenness that he's had to wade through.

01:43:52

They could have prevented at least some of it and helped prevent the molester from doing it again by being salt and light in the public arena and standing up for good public policy.

01:44:10

And the last point I want to make on this is churches say they don't want to get involved in politics. Well, since when did biblical morality become political?

01:44:19

You know, abortion 50, 60 years ago wasn't a political issue, it was a moral issue.

01:44:26

Homosexuality 20 years ago wasn't a political issue, it was a moral issue. And just because it's become politicized doesn't change the fact that it's fundamentally a moral issue which the church has a responsibility to speak prophetically on.

01:44:40

Well, what is your view about a pastor or church supporting specific candidates?

01:44:48

I understand that that's a violation of tax -exempt status, but people do those kinds of things anyway, and it seems for some reason the liberal

01:44:57

African -American churches even openly advertise and televise their support of certain candidates and they have no penalty subsequently for some reason.

01:45:10

But what is your view on churches and pastors even getting behind a pulpit and saying

01:45:16

I think you should throw the lever for this guy and so on? Well, Alliance Defending Freedom has a great program called

01:45:22

Pulpit Freedom Sunday and what they've done is explain the fact that this prohibition on 501c3 organizations like churches taking political stances, even endorsing candidates, is really a sort of bureaucratic administrative creation during the

01:45:39

Johnson administration where he was trying to get back at some churches that had campaigned, or some non -profit organizations,

01:45:46

I don't even know if they were churches, that had campaigned against him. And he passed, he got this law rammed through and it almost had unintended consequences of it being that it sort of seems to tie the hands of churches.

01:46:00

And so what they do is they encourage pastors on a given Sunday, usually October, to speak out, thousands have done so, speak a sermon that weighs in on politics, even talks about candidates, to record those sermons or print them out and send them to the

01:46:13

IRS and basically say, hey, here's what I'm doing, in the hopes that the IRS will take action so that ADF can then sue because they feel pretty confident that if this works its way through the courts it'll be found an unconstitutional violation of the

01:46:25

First Amendment of free speech. What we do here at Matt's Family Institute is we certainly encourage churches to speak out on issues and even specific pieces of legislation or referenda.

01:46:38

And as far as candidates, we provide non -partisan voter guides that ask a series of questions associated with family values and usually we leave it up to the individual voters, and we just encourage them to be informed voters to read through those voter guides on state and local candidates and see which candidate best represents their values.

01:47:01

So there is a movement out there to unshackle the pulpits from providing this type of godly influence.

01:47:12

I guess the problem that I see in that is that when a pastor is opening up the inerrant and infallible word of God from the pulpit and his main function is to teach the whole counsel of God and to preach the gospel and of course to disciple those who are in his flock, when you have an endorsement of a candidate who he doesn't even know personally for the most part, you're going to have what could be a very embarrassing situation later on when this person turns out to be possibly a fraud or a horrendous elected official that really does great damage to our nation and people remember that you were vociferously and zealously promoting this individual hand -in -hand with the scriptures and the gospel and it may do damage to the reputation of Christ's Church.

01:48:19

Just if you could respond to that. Yeah, I think the issue is more on the moral issue where the church has failed.

01:48:26

I think if the church is healthy and is teaching the scriptures and teaching the difference between right and wrong, teaching the difference between righteousness and holiness and immorality, then individuals are going to do the right thing politically.

01:48:40

I think I agree with you that a church can get off focus and become a political arm rather than a gospel arm, and I do think the main job of the church is to preach the gospel, to exalt

01:48:54

Christ in his glory, and yet I also see great Christian men through history that, you know, stood against slavery, stood against abortion, stood against some of these different things, and it wasn't because the church became political.

01:49:05

It's because they understood the difference that we worship a holy God who hates sin, so we should as well.

01:49:11

So I think there's two pendulum swings. There's the swing of the church to have nothing to say to the community, and then there's the pendulum swing where the church becomes a political arm and becomes a service station for politicians, and I think we have to be careful of both because I do agree with you that the main purpose of a church is to preach the word, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to, you know, teach what the

01:49:38

Bible has to say, and with that, we see what morals are right and wrong. We see what good leadership is.

01:49:44

We see what parents are supposed to be. We see what children are supposed to be. I mean, the Bible speaks on many areas, and unfortunately, most churches get so focused on small areas that they don't preach the whole counsel of God.

01:49:57

So I would counsel that a church's primary job is not to be a political arm, but that an individual has a responsibility, as Andrew said, to be salt and light, to be in the community, to take steps to love their fellow man, and again, a church can't be silent and be healthy.

01:50:15

So how that works itself out, I think there is, you know, debate there that should be had and should be wrestled with, but again, a healthy church will produce healthy citizens, and I think there's unhealthy churches, as he put up the case, where a teacher feels like she can't, he or she can't say anything because they'll lose their job, and I would just echo, good.

01:50:35

If you're being godly and you lose your job, then you're pleasing God, and at the same time, we shouldn't live in a society where that doesn't bother anybody, and I think there's, the church pretty much says, well, my employer says

01:50:50

I can't talk about the Lord, then I can't talk about the Lord, and yet standing around the water pool, you have people talking about pornography, you have people talking about, you know, drugs and illegal activities, and that's okay.

01:50:59

So I just see a double standard in what people are prevented to do as a Christian, and because of our silence, we've allowed them to do that, and again, that's where I see the failure, that we are called to preach to every preacher, and I agree with Andrew, that the

01:51:15

Word of God is applicable for every single human being, and how are they going to hear it if we're not bringing it to them?

01:51:22

But I think we have to be careful of what we make the purpose of the church, and that's the only warning I would, you know, see a little differently, that the church itself, as an organization,

01:51:31

I don't think it's supposed to be political, but individuals certainly have that freedom and right to give their whole life to being a godly

01:51:38

Christian man or woman in these different areas. I think it comes down, again, to definitions, and we say being political is talking about abortion, political is talking about same -sex marriage, political, and a lot of folks would say, unfortunately that it is, and then shy away from it.

01:51:55

So I really think we're pretty much in agreement that if the church speaks clearly and strongly on these fundamentally moral issues and encourages their people to not shy away from the public square, to be informed, and to do their duty,

01:52:12

I mean, to render unto Caesar, we are Caesar in a democracy, and I think, you know, voting is just sort of our duty in this kingdom as citizens of the next to try and, you know, to help our neighbors in that way is important.

01:52:29

We have Christopher from Suffolk County, Long Island, who says,

01:52:35

What advice do you men have to overcome the sheer pessimism that seems to overwhelm myself and other

01:52:45

Christians? They see the headway and the foothold that the leftist agenda and the homosexual agenda has achieved in this nation and in the world, things that seem impossible to be reversed.

01:53:03

What do you have to say about this pessimism? Do we have to become post -millennialists to overcome this pessimistic attitude on the world that we see around us?

01:53:16

You know, do we believe that we serve a God that's greater than all the forces in the world?

01:53:22

Again, truth conquers when God accompanies that truth. If we would faithfully preach the truth, what we're trusting is not our eloquent speech.

01:53:30

As Paul says, I don't come with fancy words. I don't come with great arguments. I come preaching Christ and Him crucified.

01:53:36

Now, that doesn't mean that those are the only phrases that Paul ever used, but it meant that he wasn't trusting in his own ability.

01:53:41

He was trusting that if I preach the word, God's promised that His word won't go out void, that He'll accompany

01:53:46

His word, and the Spirit will do what the Spirit does. And again, back to our comments earlier on, we can't change somebody.

01:53:54

We can't save somebody. We can't get somebody to hate sin. We can't get somebody to love righteousness. But the way that God has instructed the

01:54:01

Church is that if we preach the word, if we speak wisdom into the community, the Spirit accompanies that wisdom and convicts the hearts of men and women.

01:54:09

And again, if we're just going to cower and say, well, since evil exists, we can do nothing against it, then yeah, we're going to just be pessimistic.

01:54:16

But if we understand that the God we serve rules Heaven and Earth, there's not one molecule on this planet that He's not

01:54:22

Lord over. If we would preach faithfully, if we would teach faithfully, if we would give wise counsel and trust that it's the

01:54:29

Spirit of God that brings about change in people, whether it be individuals, whether it be a government, whether it be presidents or governors,

01:54:35

I mean, that's where our hope has to be. It can't be just we pray for these people and do nothing. We have to accompany our prayers with the preaching of the truth.

01:54:43

And I think as we have opportunity to speak and we're silent, we're given approval. If you're watching somebody get beat up on a bus and then you go home and say, wow,

01:54:51

I couldn't believe these people beat up this person on the bus right in front of everybody. Well, what did you do? Did you step in to help your fellow man?

01:54:57

Did you speak against it in a way? Or did you sit there and film it on your phone? And I just think we live in an age where, you know, people just want to be silent.

01:55:04

They want to protect their families. They want to protect their lives. They want to be silent because they don't want to ever be looked upon as judgmental or narrow -minded.

01:55:11

And I just think the Church needs to wake up and say, listen, God has given us the words of life, and if we speak them, then

01:55:17

He'll bring the dead out of the grave and He'll bring the crippled back to health and He'll bring a sinner into the way of righteousness.

01:55:23

And that's our only hope for our country. It's not through electing a Christian president. It's through God being merciful to us to not give us over to our own desires.

01:55:32

That's the whole point of Romans 1, that if you want to worship the creature rather than the creator, then

01:55:37

God's going to give you over to your own desires and you're going to find yourself doing things you'd never think possible that you would do.

01:55:43

And so, again, the Church has a weighty responsibility, but the Church's first responsibility is to God And if we're loving

01:55:50

God the way that we should, we will be loving our fellow man. But if we become man -pleasers, you know, as Paul talks about in Galatians, if you're going to be a man -pleaser, then you can't be a

01:55:58

Christian. So, again, who are we serving and who are we, you know, living our lives before?

01:56:05

Is it the eyes of men or is it the eyes of God? And, again, I think the world hears that and says, oh, you're going to be so in love with God, you're actually going to be hating your fellow man.

01:56:14

And I think just the opposite happens, that when we're living for the glory of God, we find ourselves loving people we would never love, we find ourselves serving people we would never serve, and we find ourselves going to places that we naturally would never go.

01:56:27

It's the Christian that's in love with God that makes a difference in this world. I'd like you to each wrap up with a summary of what each of you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before they leave this broadcast.

01:56:41

If you could each take a minute of time to do that. And, of course, Andrew, if you could also give our listeners all the contact information they need for the

01:56:50

Massachusetts Family Institute. Absolutely, yeah. I guess I'll start there. I think one of the most important things is people who value

01:56:57

God's design for marriage and the family, family values in general, is to live it out.

01:57:04

That is part of the answer, an important part of the answer. As ascendant, as the sexual revolution seems to be now,

01:57:12

I don't think it's sustainable. By definition, if you're aborting all your children and you're doing this hook -up, shack -up, break -up relation routine, you're not creating stable marriages and families, you're not going to reproduce as a subculture, even as a dominant culture.

01:57:29

So over time, basic demography is in favor of those who follow

01:57:34

God's design for marriage to go forth and be fruitful, to be married, to stay married, to avoid no -fault divorces, and to avoid the temptation to have, you know, two kids or one kid and three or four cars instead of the other way around, as our parents and grandparents did.

01:57:51

So I think that those who believe in God's design for family should live it out and ensure that our children do the same.

01:57:59

And in the handful of generations, Lord willing, that the numbers alone will help revive the situation, plus there's always the prayer for spiritual revival.

01:58:09

And so what our work, primarily at Massachusetts Family Institute, is to defend family values and increasingly the right to live out those family values, so that we have a chance to turn that corner and have this pendulum swing back to a place that's more reflective of God's design.

01:58:26

And we can reach at any time at ma, as in Massachusetts, mafamily .org. My email address is just andrew at mafamily .org,

01:58:34

all kinds of information on our website. Visit us or contact me, happy to talk to you. Ed Anonymous, you have about 40 seconds.

01:58:42

Yeah, I would just echo basically the same thing, that God has designed order,

01:58:48

He has designed the purpose for man, the purpose for marriage, the purpose for children, the purpose for life in general, and I just think if the

01:58:57

Church would believe that God is good and only does good, and He's instructed us in ways that are right and holy,

01:59:03

James says that if you have a faith that isn't lived out in your life, then you don't have saving faith. Saving faith must be lived out for it to be genuine.

01:59:11

If we believe something to be true, it must affect the way that we live. And I think we've grown up in a culture that's willing to say, you can be a

01:59:20

Christian if you just be quiet. You can be a Christian if it's name only. And the Church has adopted that.

01:59:26

And I just think the Church needs to wake up and say, wait a minute, if I'm a child of God, then I must live for God's sake.

01:59:32

If I'm a child of God, I must be more focused on His truth. And we're out of time, and I just want everybody to remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:41

Savior than you are a sinner. I hope you all have a safe and blessed weekend, especially those who are facing the snowstorm.