Finishing Up Review/Rebuttal of David Gushee “Reformation Project” Presentation

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, my name is James White and we are in the midst of a rather lengthy response to a presentation that was made by Dr.

David Gushie at the Reformation Project meeting in 2014. I do not wish to date this presentation too much because I hope it will be useful as our response to Matthew Vines has proven to be useful long after its initial presentation.

But I do have to recognize that I am doing this portion of this response the day after oral arguments before the

Supreme Court in regards to the redefinition of marriage. And that's what it is. I mean, obviously,

I believe from a Christian perspective, it's a profaning of marriage that mankind has no right to redefine marriage.

But be that as it may, I simply recognize that there will be people who will be watching and listening to this presentation after the result of those oral arguments becomes known.

And we cannot know what is going to take place, obviously. Certainly, some of the questions that were offered were encouraging in the sense that certainly there are individuals on the court and of course, you know,

I would point out that there are certain individuals on the court that I don't even think should be involved given their expressed entanglements and involvements and utter bias on the subject.

But be that as it may, that's what happens. Elections have consequences. But at least some people on that court are well aware of the fact that they are seriously considering identifying the fundamental conclusions of millennia of human history as on the basis of less than 25 years.

Well, actually, I'm sorry, less than 15 years. Because one of the questions was asked was, can you think of any society that had done this before 2001?

And the advocates had to say, well, no. To overthrow the collective wisdom of all preceding generations on the basis of what?

On the basis of some of the most vacuous argumentation that I've ever seen, ever heard.

But at the same time, I have to recognize that the one thing that could make the discussion in front of the

Supreme Court meaningful cannot be allowed. And that is what I've said many times before.

It is a part of what's the problem with Dr. Gushy's presentation.

And that is that the fundamental immorality of the homosexual lifestyle, homosexual acts, the entire homosexual movement, that's not even allowed anymore because it has been taken as a given by a large number of people in our society, which is why the

David Gushy's of the world, Gushy's of the world, it's so hard not to say Gushy. I don't know why.

It's just that's how it should be pronounced. But anyway, that's why that entire spectrum exists is because it has been taken as a given that there is no essential moral failure, hence there is no essential moral imperative as to male and female relationships, the purpose of gender, all the rest of that stuff has just been has been lost from the common sense of our society.

And as a result, I don't know that we even have the foundation left to to make meaningful answers, but we can make meaningful decisions.

We can pray. We can. We can hope. It's only a matter of weeks until we will discover what will happen here.

And of course, if the ideologues plus one actually overthrow all ethical and moral common sense, that will be no greater a an act.

Then all the other mistakes that the Supreme Court has made, including Roe v. Wade, Roe v.

Wade was wrong. Roe v. Wade was illogical, Roe v. Wade was irrational. Roe v. Wade is contradicted by every bit of knowledge we have, the nature of the unborn child.

And it's just one of those many times where the Supreme Court has demonstrated that it is populated by very fallible and often very ignorant and ideologically driven individuals.

And it will be our duty and it will be a costly duty, however, because obviously in this situation, it is well known that there will be results of this.

But it will remain our duty to seek to warn this culture of of the judgment that awaits it if it continues unrepentant for these things.

Of course, one of the reasons why we will have, especially a

Supreme Court, the Supreme Court makes this ruling, there will be an even an acceleration of the number of churches that will say, well, that's that.

We move on from there. And that's fully understandable.

And it's part of the reason why we're doing what we're doing in this series of responses to Dr.

Gushy is we need to understand why we believe what we believe if we're going to be willing to pay the cost of standing consistently on principle and in regards to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And many will simply say it's not a gospel issue. Jesus never said anything about it. The society has moved on.

If the church wants to remain relevant, the church has to move on, too. There's already all sorts of voices like that. And when you have the kind of argumentation that Dr.

Gushy is is presenting. We need to know why it's an error and we need to know why this is a gospel issue and that fundamentally those who are seeking to silence the church will not stop here.

This will just give them another weapon, but they will not stop there. They will not cease until they have accomplished their their purposes.

Now, Dr. Gushy is an unwilling and unwitting, unwilling, unwitting instrument in their their movement.

I can't understand how we cannot see that. And by the way, people have been contacting him about this series, and he on Twitter a few days ago indicated that he simply does not have time to respond to my group.

I guess my group is Bible believing Christians is is my group. So we are going to try to I'm going to try to wrap up today.

I don't know that I can get there. We've we still have twenty eight minutes. I've not covered twenty eight minutes of this presentation in an hour and a half before, but we're going to try for two hours a day.

So we'll see. We'll see if we can. What? Oh, oh,

OK. Yes, yes. Well, thank you very much. All right, that's true.

We need to give you the proper material for you to be able to play it there.

Hopefully that will give you what you what you need. We got it there almost.

OK, once again, this presentation was from last year, 2014 at the

Reformation Project. My recollection was September around there, as I as I recall.

And this was only a few weeks after Dr. Gashi came out in support of the gay

Christian movement. And so we're exactly where we stopped. At least according to my notes last time, we are attempting to play all of his comments so no one can make any claim.

Well, you skipped over this. You skipped over that or you didn't want to respond to this, didn't respond to that. But let's let's continue listening to Dr.

Gashi and responding to him of the homeless youth in America are LGBT. And studies undertaken since 2000.

Here's the percentage of homeless youth in some specific locations who identify as LGBT in New York City is 33 percent.

In Seattle is 39 percent. In Los Angeles, it's 25 percent. And in Chicago, it's 22 percent.

It's not hard at all to figure out why LGBT kids constitute such a high percentage of homeless youth.

The most common reasons that they themselves cite for being out of their homes are family rejection and family conflict.

And much of this family rejection is religiously motivated. It is based on this very.

Now, once again, assuming that you've listened to the preceding programs, what you have here is the accusation that religion, you know, we have to change views on this, not because of exegesis, not because of what the

Bible says, not because of any positive argumentation from from biblical parameters, but because these certain surveys have found that a certain percentage of homeless children identify as being gay or bisexual or transgender or something like that.

And that's the church's fault. They got kicked out from from unloving Christian parents is basically what's being said.

The idea that maybe just possibly these have been individuals who have been abused.

These are individuals who have been rebellious against parents and rebellion in sexuality goes along with rebellion in other areas of life.

Those kind of things, you know, drugs, alcohol, abuse on the streets, all that stuff.

Well, that'd be. We worry about that. This is all at the foot of the church.

And if we'll just change this teaching, then everything will be fine. Everything will be wonderful because then, you know, we'll just accept anything.

Well, until then, you find out that a certain percentage, you know, have predilections toward incest.

Then we got to change teaching on incest and they got a predilection toward bestiality that change, change and pedophilia got changed to pedophilia.

And and, you know, you know, it's all the problem with saying something's wrong.

See, once we say nothing's wrong, then everything will be good. That doesn't make a lick of sense.

The man's an ethicist. And yet, is that not the argument being made? We need to change our minds on this issue because saying it's wrong is resulting in this.

And let's not talk about all the other factors that go into it is it is amazing.

Same on Christ like body of Christian teaching that I've been talking about. Let's see, there's there's there's identification on Christ like body of teaching.

Has it been identified yet? What what is it? What is this on Christ like body of teaching?

Is it the exegesis of Leviticus 18 and 20?

Is it a is it a meaningful interpretation of law code? Is it a meaningful examination of the behavior of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah?

Is it a discussion of temple prostitution in first kings? Is it is it a discussion of of Romans one and the the entire flow of argument is found there?

How about first Corinthians six? Is it looking at Arsinos and Coitin and and Paul's utilization of septuagint language?

What is it? Instead, you get this vague idea, this is on Christ like teaching.

Well, it's pretty obvious to me that Christ like teaching should be derived from the

Gospels. And when we look at the Gospels, Jesus talks about the law. He talks about holding men accountable to the law.

He never once counter man's the holiness code. In fact, he goes beyond it to apply it to the to the thought and mind of man.

He says, anyone who teaches you to break the least these things is least the kingdom of heaven.

He does talk about fulfillment, but not destruction. So what is how do you even define on Christ like?

It seems to me that what is on Christ like. Is submitting

God's moral law and his decree concerning male and female to the changing whims of Western society, that seems what's on Christ like to me.

And so I will not allow the David Gush's of the world to hijack terminology like what is on Christ like.

That's an easy way to make an argument for your side without having to do the work of demonstrating the substantial nature of the argumentation for your side.

Parents not having a better way to respond from what they have been taught in their churches or in their tradition.

All too often reject and hurt their own children, destroying their lives or harming them and fracturing their families.

In the name of faithfulness to scripture, they create despair and destroy their own families.

Now that's tragic. Now, let's let's let's let's make sure we understand what's being said here.

He's not saying they're being faithful to scripture. He won't tell us what a faithful scriptural response would be other than to evidently accept these behaviors.

Because, for example, things either either mentioned earlier, it's been a few days or will mention here in a moment.

One of the terrible things these parents do is keep these children from having further contact with their homosexual friends.

Wow, well, hmm. So I suppose if we're going to follow that line of thought and find out your kid is taking crack, you're abusing them if you keep them from seeing their dealer.

Well, I never would have crossed my mind. How I don't even know how to respond to something like that.

Caitlin Ryan, who has become a friend of mine, she directs the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, which

I have now joined as a faith consultant to help them with their message to the evangelical community and others.

She described to me of tragic vortex, more and more children and youth are coming out as LGBT at younger ages.

The Family Acceptance Project has found that the why do you think that might be? I mean, when you have five year olds.

Who decide they're transgender, do you really think that came from the five year old?

I don't believe that for a second. And I cannot believe that any parent with a scintilla of common sense doesn't go.

Yeah, I wonder what those parents have been talking about. Hmm. Why do you think there are more and more coming out a younger age?

You think that has something to do with society, the thing that says something to do with societal pressures, maybe maybe it has nothing to do with their genetic makeup at all.

But we're not allowed to even speculate about things like that, because as long as you claim that you're homosexual, that.

That claim in and of itself can never be challenged, can never be examined, because it has now become it has now become a well, a profession of faith.

In the new religious dogma of of secularized

Western culture, it is it is a wonderful thing, it's to be it must be celebrated by everyone.

Everyone must celebrate that statement has to be done.

You will be forced to bow the knee before the state and make that profession. Age of coming out now is around 13.

And increasingly in her research and family support work, she reports that children are identifying as gay at much younger ages between ages seven and 12.

That's new. Because they are younger, these kids have fewer coping skills, fewer options for finding support outside the home.

So their self identity and sense of self worth are even more vulnerable than they would be if they were older. Thus, when their families learn that their children are

LGBT, if those families reject them, it comes as an even more crushing and debilitating blow than if these kids were older.

It affects their ability to love and care for themselves to avoid dangerous and high risk behaviors to have hope and to plan for the future.

The data are clear that all too often when young people come out or are found out, they are met with family rejection, which can include violent responses.

Doing evidence based research, the Family Acceptance Project has identified and researched dozens of different specific family responses and measured them to show the relationship between experiencing either highly accepting or highly rejecting or somewhere in between responses from family with the health and well -being of LGBT people as young adults.

Consider this, the higher the level of family rejection, the higher the likelihood of negative health, mental health and behavioral problems on the part of LGBT young people.

And the converse is also true. Is it does it ever cross anyone's mind that it's it's just possible, just possible?

That. Sexual deviance from the norm, which is what homosexuality is, is.

A part of indicators of a preexisting mental problem.

It you know, that that used to be a given, and now you can't even oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, can't even think about it, no.

As I read through the list of most destructive behaviors, think about the good Christian people that you know.

Think about what it would be like to help every Christian family in America never do any of the things

I'm about to say. The most destructive family rejecting behaviors include hitting, slapping and physical harming.

Verbal harassment and name calling exclusion from the family and from family activities.

Blocking access to LGBT friends, events and resources. There you go.

There you go. Blocking access to LGBT friends and resources.

This is something that Dr. Gushy wants to teach every family not to do. You need to make sure your young person can be fully exposed to lesbianism and homosexuality and bisexuality and transgenderism that you need to.

That's that's a that's a morally positive thing to do is to make sure that your kids have access to all of these things.

Just just keep that in mind, that's that's the new Christian morality being promoted by Dr.

Gushy. Blaming the child when he or she experiences abuse or discrimination. It's your fault.

It's your fault. You're being bullied. Pressuring the child to be more masculine or feminine, threatening

God's punishment, making the child. OK, OK, just just these are coming at you so fast that we only have time to sit there and think about every single one.

But it's wrong, men, to encourage your son to be manly, but if that was the viewpoint.

Back in the 1930s, we never would have won World War Two, and that's why

I don't think we could possibly win more like that again.

But here you have the demasculinization. Don't don't encourage them to. And ladies, don't don't you dare encourage your daughters to be feminine.

If that's if they if they want to be manly and he wants to be feminine, then you just need to encourage them in that.

This is, again, the new the new Christian morality and CNN and all those other folks will flock to this.

They will flock to this. See, this is this is the kind of Christianity we like. Well, when the world loves you and religious services to change their identity and sexual orientation, sending them for.

Yeah, don't don't do anything religious. Well, let's not pray. Let's not look at the Bible. No, no, no, no, no, no.

That and no therapy declaring that their child brings shame to the family and not talking about their

LGBT orientation or identity or making them keep it a secret from family members and others.

What is the role of shame? And is there is there a role for shame any longer? It seems the only people that are supposed to be ashamed are us for being

Christians is is. What would a child have to do?

To bring shame to a family. It seems to me that for most people today, that should never, ever be an issue, that there should never be any discussion.

Of bringing shame to a family that that you should just be able to free to do whatever you want to do.

There is no connection to family. There's your behavior does not reflect upon your parents. I can tell you something.

I've told the story before. I'll tell it very, very quickly. I'm sure my dad's probably listening and probably remembers this.

But when when I was about to become a father for the first time, when my wife was pregnant with the firstborn, my son.

I remember exactly I remember we were in the auxiliary studio at the radio station and I was recording those.

I was recording tapes or something, as I recall, maybe doing some production. I don't remember what it was, but. But we were talking and I think we were the only people at the studio at the station at the time, and I had been thinking and, you know, you start thinking about being a parent for the first time.

And and I said, you know, dad, I've got to ask you a question. You know.

There have been lots of times in my life and I was only 23, but there was lots of times, especially as a teenager, that, you know,

I could have gotten into all the trouble that any other teenager gets into. But I never did.

There was always there was always a restraint. There was always there was always in the back of my mind.

The thought, what in the world would my parents think I I just know how disappointed they would be if I engaged in this behavior.

And what how did you instill in me such a deep fear of of disappointing you and mom, of disappointing my parents, and with with true in -depth fatherly advice?

My dad said, son, I have no idea. Which was which was his way of saying that's really something you got to learn on your own.

It's you know, when when somebody tries to give you a you know, there's obviously certain parameters, but you know, the cookie cutter way of of answering that question is not going to work for anybody because the family dynamics in my family are going to be different than they were in our family and so on and so forth.

But. The point was, I did not want to embarrass or shame my parents, and that was a good thing.

And there have been many times on battlefields around the world. Where it was,

I don't want to shame my family or shame my country that has resulted in men acting like men and sacrificing themselves.

And it's when a country no longer has a sense of that, that it's dead. Its future is done.

And I just cannot help but remember. I cannot help but remember. Back in 2008.

When I think it was 2008 with Proposition 8 in California, wasn't that? Oh, wait. Seems like decades ago now, morally.

When that little old lady, probably a little Catholic lady, I would imagine, was out there with that cross and that group of bully homosexuals.

Basically tore it out of her hands and stomped on the ground. You remember what they were chanting? We played the video.

Well, we could only play audio back then, but I had the video. What were they chanting?

Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. And I said then,

I'll say it now again, the reason that they use that chant is because they experience it every day. They experience it every day and properly so.

Properly so. God made us that way, and when you suppress that knowledge of him, when you twist that creator creation relationship, that's what's going on in Romans 1.

Shame is going to be the result. And so if you have a society where there is nothing that causes shame, that means there's nothing that causes honor either.

See, there's a there's a price to be paid for this liberal panacea. You know, it's the same silly movement that says in Little League games, you shouldn't keep score.

Every kid on that field is keeping score. When I played

Little League the first year, we lost every single stinking game. And I'm awful glad we did, because when

I went to the All -Star game the next year and we did real well, I had earned it.

It had meaning. If we didn't keep score, there wouldn't have been any meaning to it.

There would have been no honor. And so this whole liberal mindset, there's no shame, there's no honor.

And so when he says, well, isn't it terrible? They say that you're bringing shame to the family. Is there nothing that a child could do to bring shame to the family?

Or is the only thing now, the only way you could bring shame to the family is if you're a Christian and say something's right and something's wrong.

Makes you wonder. The Family Acceptance Project has found a direct correlation between highly rejecting families and the following.

Kids from highly rejecting families are more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide at least once.

More than six times as likely to. Again, excuse me. How often do transgenders try to commit suicide after the alleged transitioning?

And by the way, there is no such thing as transitioning. There never will be. It's a lie. L .I .E. lie. It is a lie.

It doesn't happen. Can't happen. It's impossible. But what's the what's the what's the numbers for that?

And again, notice the assumption of what is causing this rather than looking at the at the real obvious issue.

That if there's something so wrong, your sexuality is messed up. Maybe that's the real reason.

Maybe that's where it's coming from. Oh, no, no. We can't even think about that anymore. You see the destruction.

That is being wreaked in people's lives. When you ignore what scripture says and replace it with the current pop trend in psychology.

High levels of depression, more than three times as likely to use illegal drugs and more than three times as likely to be high risk for HIV and STDs.

Family Acceptance Project found that even being a little less rejected down to moderate levels,

I only moderately reject you, my child. Just a little less rejecting, a little more accepting, even saying little things like you're still a part of our family.

I love you. Proud of you. Even mixing the messages a little bit reduced the harm dramatically.

Youth from moderately rejecting families were only twice as likely to attempt suicide. Compared to LGBT LGBT peers from non rejecting families.

You know what we're looking at here? This is the direct consequence of a teaching of contempt that has been poured into the brains of Christian families.

Now, did you catch that? Here's now, have we had any argument yet to substantiate this? No. If you're following the logic, you've just had a lengthy citation of statistics from a pro homosexual group.

You haven't even looked at the other side of the argument and you're using that emotionalism to now be the only foundation for your assertion.

This is all because. Of the traditional biblical exegesis of the text in regards to homosexuality, therefore, we need to change all that and it's all good now and all this will go away.

That's what you got. That's what you've got. And I would like to suggest this is why

Dr. Gushy is not rushing to promote this perspective.

Through meaningful scholarly debate, because. That won't fly in that context, he will be challenged.

To provide something much more than what he actually has. That kind of assertion is not going to accomplish anything at all, but that's there you go.

It's it's all the church's fault. It's all this teaching of contempt. And again, all you got to do, take out homosexual and and look, whenever you say this, the other side has been trained to stop thinking, just immediately start, start the emotions, stop thinking.

Take out any other group that is currently in the same position now homosexuality was in 30 years ago and his arguments would be identical.

The the rate of suicide amongst young people who have a predilection for sex with animals is very high.

Right. So what's how do you how do you fix that? You stop saying it's wrong.

Right. The the amount of suicide and depression amongst people who have intergenerational sex, incest or pederasty or pedophilia, whatever, you know, however you want to define it, although suicide all the time.

So how do you fix it? You stop saying it's wrong. You become accepting of it.

That's there are already I'm not making this up, there are already the psychiatrists, the psychologists who are putting the papers out there.

The papers are being submitted. They're being published in peer reviewed journals that are saying pedophilia.

It's a it's a orientation, just as all the other letters in the acronym are.

And we just we just have to move this, keep the society going the right direction and we got to become accepting and.

This is not the slippery slope argument again, like I said, this isn't a slippery slope, this is a cliff.

There's there's no there's no gradualness here. The foundation is gone. It's a freefall, it's a freefall, it's got to stop, it's got to stop pure emotion.

There is not a substantive element to that. But that's what wins the day today, isn't it?

That's how people get elected, that's how people. And when you ask me, why is that?

The only answer I can come up with is the judgment of God. The only thing that would lead a room full of people, and I know most of the people in this room are homosexuals, but well, and they're allies, but still.

There's plenty of homosexuals who have listened to this and gone on a very strong argumentation there, is it?

I mean, if they really are analyzing the way that God made our minds able to do, they would realize this guy's really just stringing stuff together here.

I received this text from the program director for the Family Acceptance Project. She said, quote,

This is the kind of stuff I've been getting recently on Facebook. It's like it's a rush. I hear stories, she said,

I hear stories every day that are heartrending. Children sleeping in snow banks because there are no youth shelters.

Last January, I had five children kicked out of religious homes with literally nowhere to go.

One girl slept in the snow in front of her school. She was 16. In the name of God, runaway or kicked out

LGBT kids who end up on the streets as homeless youth are more likely to be homeless for longer periods than their peers, according to the

Center for American Progress. The problem appears to be especially severe for transgender youth for some reason.

You know, not much good comes out of homelessness and not much good comes out. Let me just especially transgender youth.

Why do you think that might be? Don't you see this as a part?

See, once once you have bought into the lie. That this is just, you know, this is a morally good thing to be confused about whether you're male or female.

That's a good thing. We should celebrate that. That's wonderful. Once you accept that as a morally good thing.

You have no way of recognizing how the fact that that's a morally bad thing is related to other morally bad things that make a person dysfunctional.

And so you can't really help the person because the moral and ethical foundation that tells you what a human being is supposed to function like is no longer there.

And see, now that we have this absolute commitment to human autonomy.

Absolute commitment to human autonomy. We if you want to think you're a hamster, you're a hamster.

You might say, oh, no, whatever. Why not? Oh, you're being ridiculous. No, I'm not.

There are an entire weird, strange gatherings of people who dress up like animals because they think they are those animals.

And you might think, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, I saw that on CSI once.

Ha, ha, ha. You know, no, it actually happens. And if you can accept this, look, do you live in a place?

The White House was just celebrating the installation in the White House of the first transgender bathroom in that wonderful.

If you live in some place where you have to worry about your 13 year old daughter going to the ladies room and having a 45 year old guy in there with her and that's happening all over the place.

Hello, Houston. Then, you know, you already know that there isn't any there is no logical barrier between that and someone saying,

I'm a hamster. That's how I feel. I I'm I'm a trans trans speciesist.

There are people, Michael Brown pointed out in his book. There are people.

Who have a a mental disease.

Where they're absolutely convinced they become absolutely convinced that they're that one or more of their appendages are attacking them, they are not a part of their body.

This arm is foreign. It's a point where they feel pain.

With the recognition that that arm is there, should they be given the right to cut their arms off, cut their legs off?

Or would we recognize that that is a real fundamental problem and we should help them to recognize that there is something wrong up here?

But where is the stair to say that there's something wrong up there? Because once you have granted to everybody, every person, hey, today, you can be any gender you want.

Doesn't matter what you see in the mirror after your shower. You can be any gender you want.

Do we have any basis left for any rationality in this society at all?

Almost when you're like 13 years old. The Center for American Progress reports some specific problems that all of us should know and talk about.

For example, LGBT youth are much more likely to end up in child welfare or institutional care systems after being removed from their home due to conflict over LGBT related issues.

Leaving home because of family rejection is the greatest predictor of ending up in the juvenile justice system for LGBT youth.

Placements in foster care or other housing all too often end in further homelessness because of bias against LGBT people or abuse and mistreatment.

Once in the justice system, LGBT youth and young adults are at increased risk of being labeled sex offenders, even when not convicted of sex related crimes.

That's just. Now, now think about where is this coming from? Do you think you really think you possibly think that maybe possibly there's a little bit of bias in the numbers and the research here?

I do you really think he's he's looked at the other side to see for a balanced numbers and so.

No, I sort of doubt that. There is a disproportionate difficulty for LGBT youth in accessing safe shelter while homeless.

They are disproportionately likely to engage in survival sex to meet expenses, increasing their vulnerability to rape, disease and violence.

Disproportionately, they are victimized by high rates of robbery, assault, rape and hate crimes while on the streets.

Disproportionately, they have bad health outcomes, including drug and alcohol abuse. Disproportionately, they are subject to suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.

This has to stop. And the only way or at least a major way to make it stop is to turn the hearts of parents again to their own children.

This way, Matt, you know where that phrase comes from, messianic prophecy of the ministry of John the

Baptist. And the way to stop. All this horrible stuff.

Is. To get rid of. The very moral foundation.

That John the Baptist lost his life over. You remember

John the Baptist, right? Remember he. Lost his head. Why did he lose his head?

Because he didn't believe in incest. And and he had this destructive religious tradition and preached contempt toward those who had an incestuous orientation.

Mean man. Guess he deserved to lose his head. So so you say you quote a phrase.

That then is fulfilled in a guy who actually completely refutes by his very life.

What's your fundamental argument actually is. Christlike Christian teaching about LGBT people thoughtlessly imbibed by good

Christian parents. Thoughtlessly, folks, none of us have ever thought any of this through.

No, there's a fellow that's been on the other side for two weeks here. And he knows.

He knows that Bob Gagnon and Michael Brown and myself and Jeff Neal and all the other people that have written on this subject.

We haven't put a moment's thought into any of that.

We're just. It's a it's a thoughtless position. This there. And I haven't had a chance to see it yet.

I'm not think I don't think it's posted yet, but I don't know if you know, Jason Wallace contacted me and he did a debate up there in Salt Lake City on gay marriage last week.

And the guy that he was debating gushed about Gushy.

He was using. Here's here's one of his main main sources right there. And. So there you go.

We're all we're all thoughtless. Stop. We need a reformation, perhaps a project devoted to a reformation.

Amen. What a day we live in.

When the term reformation. Five hundred years ago. Had the meaning and the impacts it had.

And now it's being used for this. Think about that.

Moving towards a close here. Kind of. All right. I think that there are some lessons to be learned from how the

Christian teaching of contempt against Jews was ended. Lessons relevant to ending this unchristlike teaching of contempt against our sexual minorities, about one 20th, maybe of the human population, therefore one 20th or so everywhere we go, hidden, closeted, wounded, exiled.

OK, now I can't see any other way of taking that than he would have to say that one 20th.

Of all of Jesus's audiences. We're in the same boat, and I think one of the main reasons these guys will not come out to debate, they will not engage.

With the other side is because I've never heard them even try to answer the question

I have asked over and over and over again, and I've already asked in this. If Jesus knew what was in the hearts of man, as the

Gospels say he did. Then why did Jesus reaffirm the very teaching that Dr.

Gushy is identifying as a teaching of contempt? It's not, of course, teaching contempt. I reject the absurdity of the language.

I object the absurdity of the of the morality and ethics that this Christian morals and ethics teacher doesn't seem to get.

But the question remains, what are you going to do with Jesus?

Because I don't see how you can maintain an orthodox view of who

Jesus was and do this. I don't. How does that work? How does that work?

I don't get it. I don't get it. Beloved by God.

Beloved by God. We must highlight the human costs. Which involves attending to the real human beings affected.

We must engage people's hearts, not just their minds. With the real human beings who suffer.

We must engage their hearts, not just their minds. That's all you've been doing so far.

You haven't been aiming for the mind. You've been aiming for the heart. You've been doing the emotional thing all the way through. I find that highly ironic.

Under this teaching. This is something that really surprises me about responses I've been getting.

I know some of you get this as well. Any effort to say, can we describe to you the harm that your teaching is doing, is met by a certain slice of the

Christian community with you're emotionalizing the issue. You're sentimentalizing the issue.

Yep. We're humanizing the issue. The vast difference, vast difference between appealing to emotion and appealing to the mind and dealing with the human reality.

See, he's just maybe he's just too new to this homosexual advocacy to have figured out the other side yet.

I doubt that he had much exposure to the real homosexual community.

Maybe in a few years he'll have to be honest with himself and start seeing the destructiveness of a disordered sexuality.

Maybe he just doesn't know. Maybe maybe it's just such a surface level knowledge so far.

He just doesn't even know. I don't know. But you want to humanize this. Then you better stop just looking at the sanitized version and start looking at the reality.

That would that would help you out a lot. Human beings made in the image of God, sacred in God's sight, loved by God, people for whom

Christ came and lived and died. Emotionalizing the issue? Theology matters, doesn't it?

Theology matters. See, there's a whole section of folks that just have to go, well, okay,

I've got to agree with him on that. And I go, Christ died for his people.

He died for those who will repent and believe. Makes a huge difference, doesn't it?

I was listening to Catholic Answers Live. I was listening to Tim Staples recently.

Somebody called in and they said, and this was a applause moment for whoever they're referring to.

It was a university student. He said, I've got a lot of Baptist Christian friends. And all the time they're talking about doing stuff for the glory of God.

Shouldn't it be that God does what he does for love, not his glory?

And of course, Tim's like, oh, yes, you know, da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. And I'm just sitting there thinking about all the texts,

Ephesians 1, the praise of his glorious grace and all the rest of that stuff.

And it all got lost in the ishy -squishy Roman Catholic stuff that we see in papal encyclicals all the time, that no biblical emphasis upon God having a decree, accomplishing his purpose, all the rest of that stuff, that's just, that's all gone.

It's just all this, you know, the peanut butter, omnibenevolence thing, you know, where you just have love, everything else just goes bye -bye and you don't have a balanced view of God, all that kind of stuff.

And here you've got it here. Here you've got the same thing going on there. Theology does matter.

Charge me with that all day long, if you want. We will. No conversation about the

LGBT issue should any longer take place without hearing the voice of LGBT people themselves and all their diversity and all their various experiences, all your experiences.

How come that's exactly what we don't hear? You're just about to tell these people that you're going to limit them to monogamy and lifelong committed relationships.

How about listening to the majority of the homosexual community that doesn't even want it? Don't talk to me about how you're listening to everybody.

No, you're not. Come on. Some of us are onto you. We know. I mean, you've gotten into the swing pretty quick in only two weeks with this kind of stuff.

But we, sorry, we know better. Lifting up your voices of hurt and triumph, joy and sorrow, victory over all this junk, but hurt.

And actually, even some of the most conservative sectors of the Christian world are realizing, well, by golly, if we're going to talk about gay people, we might need to have a few of them there, you know?

How about that? How about that? Probably.

I'm not sure what that's referring to, but I have a sneaking hunch. It has to do with some of the things that were attended by Justin Lee and Matthew Vines right around this time period is my guess.

There's everything good in talking and debating and dialoguing.

There is nothing good in collapsing and giving in to the demand that you first have to accept that homosexuality is consistent with Christian expression before you can then even talk.

That's been Matthew Vines' excuse to backpedal on the statement that he did make before his book came out.

After we did the five -hour review of his stuff, everybody knows he said, yeah, once my book comes out, then we'll have a debate.

Because allegedly the Reformation Project is meant to train people to go into churches and convince the church to reform.

But we all know that hasn't happened. And why? Well, because I will not grant to Matthew Vines' position the foundational things that he demands that I grant to it.

In other words, I won't capitulate before we can talk. Because that's what he's saying.

You need to capitulate before we can debate. We need to be on the same side before we can debate. Okay, well, that's interesting.

So we must highlight the human beings involved. Secondly, we must call people, especially religious leaders, on it when they slip back into the old derogations and slurs and stereotypes.

This involves identifying what the current decent minimal standard is and never allowing people to get away with slipping below that.

Matthew, we talked about this one time. A kind of a, you know, a monitoring, no, we're not allowed to be a reputable

Christian leader in 2014 and say stuff like that. Say stuff like what?

I mean, you can't be a reputable Christian leader today and talk about, well, all sorts of things now from that perspective.

What are these slurs? That homosexuality is a sin? That it's fundamentally disordered?

What are you talking about? That's what I'd like to know. And does that go both directions,

I wonder? Not okay. It puts moral pressure on people not to slip back into patterns that are already so destructive.

Third, we must engage the destructively cited biblical texts in the ways done by the reformers of Christian anti -Judaism beginning in the 60s, which does involve a lot of what

Matthew has been about and this effort has been about. And James Brownson. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, oh, oh, oh. James Brownson.

He said James Brownson. Okay, see? Brownson's there, man. That's why Brownson won't debate either. We have a standing challenge.

James Brownson, you must come out. You must defend your material. It's absolutely vital.

But they won't do it. I'm sorry. Matthew Vines has not had an original statement, an original position on any biblical text whatsoever at any time.

I challenge anybody to show me where Matthew Vines has done any original work.

He can't read the languages for crying out loud. How can you do original work if you can't read the languages?

I mean, pretty much everything I've said has been said before. However, I'll point out when

Jeff Neal and I wrote the same sex controversy. I did the work on Arson Acoites.

And one of the things I did was I had back then it was called the TLG CD -ROM.

It's now an online service. But I had the TLG CD -ROM, Thesaurus Lingua Graecae. Had used it in my first doctoral work.

And so I did a full contextual historical analysis of every place that Arson Acoites appeared.

And you'll see, I don't think I can find it just looking at the looking at the footnotes.

But you'll see, especially because it looks like, oh no, there they are.

Oh, we put the notes at the end of each chapter. It makes it even tougher. I included a fairly lengthy discussion of the fact that there is actually one possible place.

A scan page 159. A scan of the relevant material found in the

Thaurus Lingua Graecae CD -ROM reveals a single use of term prior to Paul the infinitival use in the

Sibylline Oracles 273. This work is dated by the TLG canon data as early as 2nd century BC. However, the more common dating is

AD 1st century. If the material is contemporaneous with Paul, the origin of the term could have come from Vinic sources from which

Paul could have derived the word as well. And if the material is post -Pauline, its use could have come from Paul or from a common

Jewish source. So at least when analyzing this material,

I did original work. Can someone show me anything original

Matthew Vines has done on any of these texts that is not found before him in Boswell, Benzoni, and Mallincott, Scroggs.

And then remember, just historically speaking here, Vines video came out before Brownson's book did.

About a year and a half, two years, somewhere around there. And once Brownson comes out, then

Vines all of a sudden changes all of his arguments. And guess where they come from?

James Brownson. James Brownson. Well, if his arguments were so good back then, why do you need

Brownson? Show me something he has done that is original on these texts that is not found in preceding published material.

Show me something. I can't think of anything. I can't think of anything. So I'm sorry,

Dr. Gesche, but anyway.

Fresh research on the background and meaning of the Biblical passages most commonly cited. Broader contextualization of the circumstances in which they were written.

By the way, these are things that Dr. Gesche does not do in his book.

The Biblical material was simplistic and was primarily a reference to other sources.

There is no original work on his part. There is no original work on Vines' part. The man is not a Biblical scholar.

He's an ethicist. He is one, but an ethicist. And he doesn't do it in his book.

He just doesn't. He relies on others. And the primary approach is, well, we're not sure what this meant, we're not sure what that meant.

You know, Brownson says this refers to accessibility. All that kind of stuff, which if you're, sadly, familiar with the corpus of material that this movement is producing, you know exactly where it came from.

It's not original. Not new. And constructive reinterpretation in the spirit of Christ.

But, now I'm going to be a little contrarian. One major lesson that I draw from the long struggle related to Christian anti -Judaism is that it is best not to get too fixated on the six or seven big passages most commonly cited in the anti -gay teaching tradition.

Now, do you see why I have said over and over and over again that while we must know these and we must be prepared to do battle on these, because the other side cannot win a consistent biblical, hermeneutical debate on these subjects.

They can't. Have we not proven that? I mean, I can't get these guys to debate, but we have gotten a few people to debate.

And can anyone seriously argue that John Shelby Spong came even close to giving a response?

How about Barry Lynn? Yeah, I don't think so. What was the fellow in Salt Lake's name?

Bradshaw. Dee Bradshaw. Dee Bradshaw? No. No. Justin Lee? I was doing everything in my power to keep him from ringing out of the room.

So, seriously? There's no question here. But how many times have

I said, if that's all we've got, we have lost the battle. Because if you don't understand that those negative texts are there because of the overwhelming weight of the positive teaching of the

Bible regarding gender, sexuality, the relationship of male and female, the complementary nature of male and female, which all these guys have to throw out.

You've got to be able to see that. You've got to start with Matthew 19. You've got to start with Genesis 2. You've got to start with recognizing the foundations.

That's why we've covered these things over and over again. And I know some of you have probably found some of that boring, but hopefully, maybe you see this, you listen to Supreme Court stuff, and you start going, oh, okay.

Maybe you're right. I do need to be putting some verses on my memorization list that I never even thought

I'd ever put on my memorization list. Yeah, maybe. Because when change happened on Christian anti -Judaism, it wasn't just about going back to John 8 and Matthew 27 and Acts 7 and other passages and saying, let's look at them really closely and come up with a new interpretation.

Instead, it involved changing the conversation to the more central text related to the following of Jesus Christ, what it means to be the people of Christ.

So, we must change the conversation, not that we'll duck those other texts, but we must change the conversation to what it means to live in the way that Jesus taught us.

I noticed this when I was studying Christian rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. One thing I looked at was, if you've got a 1 % of the

Christian population who is risking their lives to save Jews, what's different about them? How did they read their Bible? And it was never because they read

John 8 and Matthew 27 and Acts 7 differently. Not in 1942.

It was because they believed that Jesus taught us the golden rule. And Jesus said that if you want to love

God, if you want to be my follower, you love God with everything and you love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus taught about good

Samaritans attending to the bleeding ones by the side of the road. And themes like being our brother's keepers and the sacred worth of every person and our obligations to be compassionate, merciful, and just.

I now increasingly wonder that if we spend all of our time arguing about Leviticus 18 and 1

Corinthians 6 -9 and Romans 1, we may be missing the opportunity to call Christians back to the central texts and themes that are supposed to be central in our lives as Christians anyway.

Now catch this folks, you need to understand, listen, listen to what you're hearing here. This perspective thinks that you can prioritize scripture.

This is, this is the love exegesis, this is the love hermeneutic where you can say, this is the most important thing and therefore anything that is contrary to that, we can subjugate that, reinterpret, massage it.

You see this in the emergent stuff, you see it in all the liberals. Someone in channel was just pointing out something

I did not know and that is that Dr. Gushy got his

MDiv from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, but that was 1987.

And if you know anything, then you know that was before the conservatives were able to get it turned back around the right direction and it was very, it was probably the most liberal seminary at that time.

So it makes sense that you would have this kind of liberal hermeneutic that allows for the gymnastics here.

But here's the idea. The idea is we come up with an overarching theme.

We don't drive this from a balanced exegesis of the text, no, no, no. We come up with an overarching theme and then we find the texts that substantiate that theme, they become the most important text and therefore those that don't fit become de -emphasized.

It's not exegesis, it's not allowing the word to speak for itself. It's coming up with a better way for the word to be understood.

And you saw that, well, we've covered so many people that utilize that kind of a perspective that it's hard to even keep track of them anymore.

You know, I mean, it isn't like there are very many

Christians who wake up in the morning saying, how am I going to live my life today? What's going to be central for me loving, treating people right and following Jesus?

They don't go to Leviticus 18. They just don't. They go to listen, take up your cross and follow me, listen, love your neighbor as yourself.

Catch it. Did you catch it? They don't go to Leviticus 18, love your neighbor as yourself.

Where is that from? Anybody know from Leviticus? Oh, I, I, I remember hearing that on the ride when

I first listened to this. And I just. I may have cackled,

I may have, I don't know, I made some kind of noise, I'm sure. But they don't even they don't even seem to realize.

They don't go to Leviticus 18, it's love your neighbor as yourself. Where do you think Jesus got that from?

It's just it was I, I don't even know what to say. It's just like, really?

You didn't catch that? Doing to others as you would have them do unto you, you know, and all kinds of other richly meaningful, central themes.

If we allow people to move the debate to the margins, in a sense, we're giving up ground.

We shouldn't give up. To the margins. Definition of sin.

Very law of God, that broken law which required atonement, required the incarnation, that's the margins now.

That's the margins. Do they want to paint us as being backwards bigots that are simply focused upon irrelevancies that are on the margins rather than focusing upon the real important stuff?

And that sounds really good until you start trying to define what the really important stuff is. And you start pushing.

And well, they can't really answer the questions anymore because they've actually washed away the whole foundation while you weren't watching.

That's what this movement's all about. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? It looks more like that.

And then when we're challenged, double down. Cling to Jesus' example and the way he conducted his ministry.

Spend a lot of time in the Gospels. Yeah. Maybe if we did that, we might notice his warnings about religious self -righteousness and contempt for others.

And we might also notice his his teaching about the law of God and his affirmation of that and his teaching about gender and his teaching about marriage and.

Yeah. His embrace of outcasts and marginalized people, his attacks on religious.

His embrace of outcasts and marginalized, repentant people.

Repentant people. Jesus never embraced someone who came along to him and said, you know what, Jesus, I'm really into adultery.

I'm not interested in repentance. I want you to change your views and accept my adultery and celebrate it.

Show me an example of that. Dr. Gushy, you can't do it. Yes, sir.

Did I just hear him instruct them as to how to respond when challenged to double down and when he's challenged.

He doubles away. He he doesn't have time. No, that's true. This is true.

Hey, it's different when you're standing in front of an audience that's going, amen, and facing someone who actually knows all the holes in your argument.

It's a different world. They're not going to challenge him. I know. I have to block access to God's grace.

His elevating as examples, those who simply and humbly pray for God's mercy, like repentant tax collectors, repentance, teaching about God's prodigious grace and perhaps above all his death on the cross for the sins of all of us, beginning with each of us, the chief of sinners.

We must focus tightly on Jesus Christ, our savior and Lord and ask what is the most faithful path of following Jesus, this

Jesus, this Jesus, the Jesus that for some reason talked all about the law and affirm these things, but we can somehow not worry about that part any longer.

Which, which Jesus are we talking about here? And we must listen for and be ready for the spirit of God, which looks like our hard hearts melting, our calcified minds changing, our spirits repenting.

It looks like our church is growing more inclusive, our courage deepening, our love for the unwanted growing fierce.

It looks like joyful cross bearing for Jesus sake. It looks like solidarity with the oppressed.

It looks like abundant joy. Doesn't that sound wonderful? But you know, this work is hard for a couple of reasons.

One is you have the issue itself, but then there's also the authority problem in the church and we really have to be sensitive to this.

It's never just about a few Bible passages and how they should be interpreted. It's about capital A authority, the authority of scripture, the authority of tradition, the authority of those well coiffed church leaders you see on TV telling you the authoritative interpretation of this or that passage.

It's about who gets to say who's got it right. That issue is hard enough and it's really hard in evangelicalism.

It's also about the general unwillingness of Christians to admit they might have gotten something wrong either individually or collectively.

The idea is very unsettling. It's hard to face. Have you ever heard anybody say, if we're wrong about this, what else might we be wrong about?

It would be really helpful if we had been given any reason to think we were wrong.

Have you heard anything yet? I mean, seriously, have you heard anything yet?

I've heard all sorts of emotions. I've heard false parallelisms to, to anti -Judaism and all sorts of stuff like that, but I've not heard any argument that overthrows the idea that we're wrong that overthrows the fundamental biblical teaching on human sexuality.

Have you? I have not heard a word. I've not heard a word.

Now maybe it's because of where he is. He can just assume that everybody agrees, but that's not really the, that's not really what this presentation is about.

Anyways, I, it would be helpful. And I, like I said, I read his book, there's a came out and the fundamental argument was what we, you know, we just, we just can't tell it.

It might be this, it might be that. We don't know because we don't know. We take the hermeneutic of love. La la la.

The cognitive world begins to shake. So that's not about the

LGBT question. That's about how do I know anything? Makes people nervous and antsy.

It's especially hard for those responsible for institutions to admit prior error.

We were wrong. Our church was wrong. Our policy was wrong. That might involve repentance.

Oh, okay. Well, that's a problem. We don't want to do that.

We've got an institution to protect. But the church has repented before. It's really important to remind people that the church has gotten some key things wrong before.

Not to make them feel bad, but to say, look, the church repented of antisemitism and of supporting slavery and some horrible teachings about women and race.

And you know what? We can repent now and we can survive repentance and end up better on the other side.

Breaking open a settled paradigm seems to take transformative encounters with God and with people empowered by the

Holy Spirit. This is what happened to me. People want to know my story. I had the privilege of getting to know and love

LGBT people who God sent my way. And the old biblical paradigm simply could not hold up anymore.

Old biblical paradigm. Do you think he even realizes he said that? Do you think he even realizes he said that?

Is there something still inside him that realizes he knows what the biblical paradigm actually is? Just as with James Brownson, the family member.

Family member comes out, all of a sudden everything gets reoriented. Now, looking at his background, he went to Southern when it was liberal.

Then he went to Union. Union is barely Christian. It's that liberal. And that's where he does his doctoral work.

So, not talking about a conservative here that suddenly saw the light.

It included my own sister, who you may have heard about, but lots of other people too. Mainly in my local congregation, sisters and brothers in my church.

There you go. My sister, sisters and brothers in my church.

There's the personal aspect. It's like, see, well. And you go, when you have scholars who used to say

X, and then they say Y, and their arguments are primarily emotional.

Hmm. How do you deal with their sudden change in scholarship?

Might there be a bias there? Might there? Well, no, no, no, no. This is a

Damascus Road light, breaking in type thing. It was not an issue anymore after that.

But not everyone has such encounters or is open to them. One reason we all need to come out as LGBT or allies is because we're all is so we can make such transformative encounters available to more of those who have not had them yet.

Everyone who comes out makes it harder for evangelical America to believe that this is someone else's problem.

Meanwhile, it's hard for Christians to change their minds and their hearts if they have never had a meaningful conversation with an

LGBT person or a fiercely committed ally. So, so let's get out there.

Let's get out there? Let's get out there and have monologues. Dr. Gashi, would it not?

Would you not reach the very audience that you're talking about right now by debating me or Michael Brown or Robert Gagnon?

Isn't that exactly how you would get this message out there? Can you?

Well, would any wider door be open to you? To the very audience you're talking about right now than by doing that?

Dr. Brownson? Matthew Vines? Hello? Phone ringing.

We call you. You don't seem to be calling us. Finally, people have woven the LGBT narrative into a broader cultural decline narrative that goes something like this.

Our culture is turned away from God, sliding down the slippery slide, and we need to stop it right here.

And the way we'll stop it is by blocking any advance for inclusion for LGBT people.

Here, once again, LGBT people turn into symbols. Not people. Symbols.

Bringing an end to the marginalization and mistreatment of sexual minority Christians and others requires helping our sisters and brothers in the church see that LGBT Christians are not agents of cultural decline, but marginalized brothers and sisters in Christ who just want full inclusion in the community of faith, just like everyone else.

Now, is that an accurate definition? What would be, okay, again, take out

LGBT, even though that, even there, let's just, let's just leave the

T in there. Bruce Jenner, big story right now, just wants full inclusion in the body of Christ like anybody else.

What is required for full inclusion in the body of Christ? What, what, what's, what is required biblically?

God has defined what gender is, and Bruce Jenner wants to mutilate his body so as to fulfill some childhood fantasy.

And is the church supposed to go, good thing. That's a mutilation of the body in rebellion against God's creative decree of male and femaleness is a good thing.

You are welcome, Bruce. You do not have to repent of anything. Repentance is not necessary.

We will celebrate whatever. Is that what we're being asked to believe?

Once you take that out and start plugging in other things. So does this argument work here? Does that argument work there?

People just want inclusion in the church. No, they want to change the gospel, change

God's requirements, change the holy bride into the cultural bride.

That's what they want. And you, Dr. Gushy are assisting them in their quest.

Unwittingly, perhaps, blinded by personal issues, but still assisting.

This is not, you know, Rome burning. The goal,

I think, is pretty clear now. Ultimately, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender

Christians must be accepted and welcomed in the church on the same basis as any other sinner saved by the love of God in Jesus Christ.

How can you even define those terms? Any other repentant sinner?

Repentant of what? Repentant of what, sir?

How can you define the term repentant? Romans chapter 1 describes that activity as dishonoring in their very persons.

So it's something that such were some of you, not such are some of you.

How do you define the term? How do you get around this? Well, Romans 1 isn't about believing repentant homosexuals.

It leaves the language utterly meaningless. And I think you know that.

I think you know that. I'm not sure how you convinced yourself to sacrifice language and meaning, but you're not the first.

Nothing harder than that, just that right there. Can I say it again? Ultimately, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender

Christians must be accepted and welcomed in the church on the same basis as any other sinner saved by the love of God in Jesus Christ.

And if any gay, homosexual, lesbian, transgender person will repent of their sin and seek to live a holy life and the lordship of Jesus Christ, they will be accepted in the church.

It's the ones that are saying, I will not repent. You must celebrate my sexual sin.

That's the problem. That's the problem. This means that your, their, our participation in Christian community must be governed by the exact same principles that apply to any other believer.

This is not a revolution. This is just bringing the church into contact with its own deepest commitments.

It shouldn't have to be a revolution anyway, to get the church to be the church for all. For many in this room, such a claim is an obvious truth, but as you well know, it is not a truth universally acknowledged.

In the end, incremental progress toward partial, conditional half acceptance is not enough. You are right to ask and to require full, unequivocal, equal acceptance in Christ's church on the same terms as everybody else.

And by the way, this includes the fierce debate over sexual ethics. If LGBT participation in Christian community were governed by the same principles that applied to every other believer, believers of every tribe, tongue, race, and nation, that would settle the sexual ethics debate once and for all.

What does that look like? For me, I'm pretty conservative on these matters. Okay. Now, now, now listen in here because here's where he's going to listen to the applause at the end of this one and see if it's quite as raucous as what we just heard.

My book indicates it looks like celibacy outside of lifetime covenant commitment and monogamous fidelity within lifetime covenant commitment, a lifetime covenant commitment that the church has historically called marriage.

Now, I guess I just have to stop for a moment. There is, there is a level of astounding arrogance, astounding arrogance on the part of any person who can stand in front of an audience and pretend that two men or two women is a covenant of marriage in the way the

Bible teaches. I mean, it's false teaching, it's absurd on its face, but that aside, there is a, there is a level of astounding arrogance to, to be able to, without blushing, redefine the meaning of words.

A husband marries a wife. If you have two husbands, that's not a covenant of marriage.

If you have two wives, that's not a covenant of marriage. If you don't have a husband, you don't have a marriage.

If you don't have a wife, you don't have a marriage. Husband and wife become mother and father.

This becomes the way of the propagation of species. Two husbands can't be fathers, two wives can't be mothers.

This is, this is a given. This is, there is no way to get around the binary reality that God has placed for his glory and for our good in his own creation.

This is an act of rebellion and it is as arrogant as can be.

It astounds me that modern man, that God has so lifted his hand of restraint that now we're seeing the depth of the depravity of man that he can actually engage in this kind of activity and call, and do it as a quote -unquote

Christian. Shocking. It's shocking, but it needs to be recognized for what it is.

It is an act of arrogant, high -handed rebellion. Arrogant, high -handed rebellions.

Nothing more, nothing more. This norm, as I argue in my book, applies to all

Christians. It is demanding, countercultural, and essential to the well -being of children and adults.

It is essential to the well -being of children and adults.

Why? I, for some reason, thought that having a mother and a father was also necessary and good for both children and adults.

And you, Dr. Gushy, are standing in front of a group of people and saying, it's okay.

Let's have two men or two women. What happened to father and mother?

How can you do this with a straight face? I don't understand. I really do not. I mean, I see it all the time.

I have to read these books. I know you all are doing it, but it is, I've never gotten to the point where I can go, how do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning?

How do you do this? I mean, the constant daily process of trying to beat down that knowledge of God and re -deceive yourself must be exhausting.

It really must be. I don't, I can't understand it. I don't.

That the same covenantal marital norm should apply to that particular minority, one twentieth or so of the human and Christian population, whose difference from the majority relates to sexual orientation and gender identity.

They too should be held to the same standard as every other Christian. Celibacy outside lifetime covenant marriage, monogamous fidelity within lifetime covenant marriage.

The opponents of this gathering think that what we are about is moral chaos and the weakening of Christian morality.

I think what we are about is inclusion of the LGBT minority of the church into the same rigorous

Christian morality that applies to every other Christian believer. Well, that's interesting.

How do you define this covenant of marriage, biblically speaking?

Maybe you don't concern yourself about that any longer. Maybe that's that's the old biblical paradigm that you actually need to have a biblical paradigm.

But covenant of marriage, the only way

I can define that biblically is a covenant before God between a husband and a wife.

It's binary. Where is your paradigm for?

Well, for example, the husband and wife paradigm is used by Paul in Ephesians chapter five of Christ in the church.

So would it be OK to have Christ in Christ and church in the church?

Because it's a mix and match thing, you know, male, female, that's cool, that's good. But male, male, female, female, that's

OK, too. Right. You see, it seems you've not understood the covenantal nature of this and the fact that covenants have certain conditions laid down by the one that gives a covenant as male and female, sir, man and woman, husband and wife.

Dr. Gushy, you will have to stand before God someday to answer for the words that you are uttering in front of these people claiming you believe the

Bible to be the word of God. What will you say?

What will you say, sir? Maybe this is our moment to bring all

Christians out of a kind of a moral sloppiness into the high standard of faithful covenantal monogamy.

There are only so many times in life I am left of the speechless. But here you go.

Maybe this is the time by completely profaning marriage that we can get monogamy going.

Has he given us any reason why it should be monogamy? Why not polyamory?

Again, he keeps using LGBT. What's the

B stand for? Bisexual. How can a bisexual be fulfilled sexually in a monogamous relationship?

Has he thought about it? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

That is my agenda on that issue, and I truly apologize that it took me 20 years to figure out the simple truth.

Let me close by saying I applaud you. Matthew Vines and friends, you impress and inspire me.

You are a movement. I was going to say a movement of youth in the church. There's a lot of young people here, but there's a bit of diversity of age as well.

A cross -generational movement amending my notes, I say to you. Amen. A cross -generational movement in the church demanding a better future for the whole church, because what we have now is not okay.

You are a movement for the liberation of the oppressed, like many of the most important movements for human dignity in history.

You are a movement of high energy and distinctively evangelical hopefulness, based on the power of God to advance the reign of God.

Another reason why the term evangelical basically doesn't have any meaning anymore, because of course it comes from Evangelion, has the gospel, which would include atonement, sin, wrath, repentance, all that stuff that evidently we really can't talk much about anymore, because that's really not

Christ -like. That's preaching contempt. You are a movement whose time has come.

I will henceforth oppose any form of discrimination against you in the church or in the state.

I will seek to stand in solidarity with you who have suffered the lash of countless Christian rejections.

I will be your ally in every way I know how to be, and I will ask your forgiveness for how long it took me to get here.

I will view what got us here as one of those tragic situations in Christian history in which well -intentioned

Christians just trying to follow Jesus misread scripture, causing great harm to oppressed people, and what turned out to be a violation of the character, teaching, and example of Jesus Christ.

It has happened before. We have repented before. We have changed before.

We can do it again. I believe it will happen sooner than many think. This debate will be over, and many will wonder what the fuss was about.

Think about that for a second. This debate will be over, and many will wonder what the fuss was about. What kind of Christianity would you be left with in that situation?

Would it be able to define sexual sin, any sexual sin? Would it be able to talk about wrath?

Would it be able to talk about atonement? Would it be able to even define what holiness would look like? For the collapsing, dying, liberal denominations, the liberal

Lutherans and the Episcopalians and now PCUSA, for those liberal denominations that have collapsed on biblical authority, it is already over.

Yeah, I understand that, but what about people who actually really believe the

Bible and actually believe that the Christ who walks its pages actually meant what he was saying and want to have the same view of scripture that he did?

This will never be over. It can't be over, because it's a gospel issue. And here, Dr. Gushie is on the wrong side of a gospel issue.

I see that we have a communion table set before us. I didn't know that, but I have some words to say that speak to that.

Together, one day, all of us will dine together at the banquet table of the Son of God. We will be asked when we go to meet the

Son of God whether we loved and served Jesus with everything that was in us. And then together, we will have a really great party.

This room is a foretaste of the future of the church, and that church is a foretaste of that kingdom banquet.

Do you remember this text? It's been coming to mind a lot recently. See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more.

Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.

And on that day, we shall all be one at last. God bless you, brothers and sisters.

Well, there you go. What we have seen in that presentation, first of all, again, when

I first mentioned and linked to this, there were some on both

Twitter and Facebook who said, you know,

I could only listen to a portion of it. I don't want to listen to everything he has to say. It's so obvious he's a false teacher.

But I understand all that, and I understand that not everyone wants to have to listen to things that most of us find to be blasphemous, extremely troubling.

But the reality is, we need to understand what arguments are being made out there.

I don't enjoy reading the books I have to read.

I mean, anymore, I get most of them electronically, thankfully, so I don't have to keep finding places to store all this stuff, but it's not pleasant.

But it's necessary for what I do, and it's necessary for us as Christians if we are going to be able to look at these folks in the eye and say, we have listened, and here is where you are wrong.

Here is where I cannot follow you. Here is where you have missed the path of true discipleship of Christ.

You can't do that out of ignorance. You know, it's like when you, if you're going to plant a church in Salt Lake City, you may not want to read the

Book of Mormon, but you better do it. If you want to plant a church in Pakistan, you better know the

Quran. If you want to minister in Brooklyn, New York, you better know something about the

Watchtower. Well, we've been called to be salt and light in Western culture, which has been infected with a disease called homosexualism.

And as a result, you've got to understand what the arguments are that people are using to subvert entire churches, entire denomination.

And what you've just listened to has obviously spoken the language of people of our day who are primarily motivated by emotion.

They are not motivated by recognizing their place in history. They are not motivated by logic and rationality.

They are not motivated by recognition of overarching worldviews. They are motivated by what causes their heart to feel something.

That's the best way to control people. People who think critically are not easy to control.

And so we have to hear what is being said and point out there's no substance here.

From a Christian perspective, if this man is speaking to Christians, there is no substance there.

Didn't even attempt to really introduce substance at all. Now, two things.

One, I'm going to go ahead and just mention this because it's there. And if one person could be confused, maybe some other words,

I don't know. But someone in channel seems to be really confused about something that I think is incredibly obvious, but maybe

I can clarify it. I pointed out the problem in talking about monogamy for a bisexual.

The whole concept is, well, why should two men marry? Well, because they are oriented to desiring sexual fulfillment with another man, not with a woman.

And because sexual desire and orientation is the be all and end all of all things, then we should redefine marriage so that if your orientation is toward a male, you can fulfill, you can be happy.

I mean, I listened to a debate, well, sort of a debate. I don't even know what you'd call that, but Dr.

Gagnon was on Unbelievable last weekend and I listened to the program. That was fascinating.

Well, we may have to play some sections of that and review that in the future on the program. But the lesbian on the program said that she had to come out otherwise she was going to die.

She was going to die unless she expressed her lesbianism.

Okay. Well, at least with a male homosexual, you could put that in a two -person category.

With a lesbian, you could put that in a two -person category. A heterosexual, you can put that in a two -person category because in each one of those, their orientation could be expressed.

But you can't do that for a bisexual. A bisexual has desires for both a male and a female.

You put him in a monogamous relationship and he's going to have to, if it's a he, going to have to suppress.

And suppression is a bad thing. You can't ask people to suppress anything. That's the whole reason for redefining marriage in the first place.

No suppression. That makes people unhappy. The only way for a bisexual to express the full range of their sexual desire is to be in a throuple where you have both a male and a female with whom you can express that sexual desire.

So to put them in that the stricture of monogamy is to say to the bisexual what we've always been saying the homosexual.

You need to suppress that inappropriate desire, at least part of it, because it actually goes two different directions.

So seems very, very clear to me. And there you go. The other thing is to make sure everyone understands we have an open challenge to Dr.

Gushy, to James Brownson, to Matthew Vines, full moderated scholarly public debate.

We've already proven we can do it. We've already proven there's no question about this. We can engage in that kind of debate.

It can be done respectfully. It can be done properly. We don't even have to argue with anybody.

Oh, you just we've proven we can do it. The proof is out there. That's not even an issue. There's no reason to decline based upon that.

I think listening to what Dr. Gushy said there at the end, he's under moral obligation to accept that invitation.

I cannot possibly see how he can stand in front of that audience and say the things that he said and then go,

I just don't have time. I don't have time. You might say, well, you don't have standing.

Published, major publisher, been out 14 years. I can show you the debates.

John Shelby Spong, Barry Lynn, Justin Lee, we have standing.

So what will Dr. Gushy do? I truly believe he's under moral obligation, given what he said, given not only how he framed his thesis, but demonstrated it and then exhorted the people there, double down, get out there.

How do you then when faced with challenge to actually stand up and deal with the issue?

Do you go, well, I don't have time for that. I don't have time to deal with your group. What do you mean?

The group that actually knows where your argument is grossly flawed? That group? I don't know what the future is going to hold on this subject.

I do not know. But I do know that I do not want, you know, the big argument that you hear people say, well, we don't want to be, we don't want to be left behind by history.

We don't want to be on the wrong side of history. I can think of so many times when the righteous at the time of their persecution were told that they were in the wrong, that they were on the wrong side of history, that history now recognizes they were the only ones who were standing in the right place.

And I don't want my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.

And I speak only of those who would walk in the faith. I don't want them to look back at us and blame us for having collapsed in that first generation that had to pay the price for speaking the truth to a culture in love with its own depravity.

I don't know what that's going to include. I don't know what that's going to cost. And I'm not sitting here saying, and I know

I'm just going to be the first one to pay the price. I don't know. I'll be just as dependent upon God's grace as anybody else.

If it comes to that, I don't want to lose my freedom. I don't want to lose my rights and my privileges and everything else.

I don't who does, but it may well come to that a lot faster, a lot faster than any of us could ever have imagined.

And unfortunately, Dr. David Gushy will have assisted in that happening.

He will have assisted and having collapsed on this vital issue, not seeing its importance and being taken in by simple deception, important issues, important issues.

We have gone almost five hours in response. We have played everything that Dr.

Gushy said. Is there more to be said? Yeah. I'm leaving very shortly for Dallas.

I have other things to be doing, but one of the things that I've has been constantly on the list is an in -depth response to Brownson.

My reason I haven't gotten around to it is because he's the best I have right now, and so it takes time to do it right.

It takes time to lay out the materials correctly, and it's not easy for an audience to follow.

But we need to do it. We need to do it. It's got to be done. And what

I may do to make it more interesting for the audience, in fact, what I will do is I will ask both

Michael Brown and Dr. Gagnon to join me for certain elements of that response where they have a special expertise in particular areas.

Of course, Dr. Gagnon has an expertise in the entire area, but, you know, talking to Semitic languages and things like that, have

Michael on, we'll talk about the holiness code, things like that. But it needs to be done while we can still do it.

While we can still do it, because I truly have to wonder if after even the summer of this year, we will not suddenly see a tremendous move of restriction upon what we can say specifically on this subject.

We saw just last week when a grassroots movement arose to stand with the folks who were hit with a $135 ,000 fine unjustly.

Obviously, we recognize that. And let me say openly, any human judge who will judge in that fashion,

Jesus said, this is Jesus speaking, it would be better if a millstone were hung around your neck and you're drowned in the depth of the sea, then you should offend any of my little ones.

And if you are going to offend Christian people who are seeking to be faithful to following Jesus Christ, you will stand before him someday as judge.

He will be the judge. You won't be anymore. You'll be the one being judged. And Jesus said, it'd be better if a millstone was around your neck and you're drowned in the depths of the sea.

You're never born. That is the word of God. That's the

Jesus liberals don't like. But that's what he said. When a movement began to raise funds to help them, the company hosting the funding canceled it.

Canceled it. Once the Supreme Court rules, don't you think that we are all going to be scrambling to find ways of continuing to communicate?

Think about it. Think about it. That's why I think we need to get to it as quickly as we can. And may

I suggest one other thing as we wrap up? When you watch these programs, when you listen to these programs, may

I suggest something? Storage is really cheap these days.

Download it. Save it. Don't assume it's going to be there the next week.

I just think that's wisdom in the future. I have encouraged folks on Facebook to go to youtubedownloadersite .com

to download that, where they can download our YouTube videos directly in the same quality that we uploaded them.

And it's a free program. Needs to be done. Needs to be done. The fact of the matter is, we may be needing to think about how to distribute this program or programs like it in the way that we used to do

Fidonet. Literally. Off the grid, in essence.

Days are coming. Because my friends, I've said it for decades now. And those of you who have been listening,

I guess the Wayback Machine just popped back to like 1998 or something like that. So you go back and listen.

The homosexual movement does not want equal rights. They want uber rights. And nothing has been, nothing

I've ever said in the past, culturally speaking, has been more fully confirmed than that in what we have seen in our culture.

And I pray that God will protect us. I pray that God will grant repentance.

But right now, I don't see him doing that. I don't see the evidence of that happening. And so we're simply called to faithfulness and wisdom.

So download and save. Always a good thing to do. We've gone for five hours.

I appreciate your attention during all of this time. Once again, Dr. Gushy, I get the feeling you probably will never watch this.

But if you do, sir, you are challenged. You're challenged to stand behind what you have said and to engage in full, moderated public debate.

I will come with my Bible open. What you have said cuts across the very essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I call you, sir, to repentance. But if you will not repent of your having repented, then

I call you to stand behind what you have said. I think you're under moral obligation to do so.