Continued Response to Dr. David Gushee (Part 2)

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Thursday afternoon and we are continuing the series we began on the last program, responding to Dr.

David Gushie of Mercer University, a Christian ethicist who has recently become, as he describes himself, a staunch ally of the gay

Christian movement. We are specifically reviewing the entirety of his presentation at the

Reformation Project Conference late in 2014. He has written a book,

Changing Our Mind. We might get around to responding to that as well. Read that when it first came out as I read.

Actually, I won't even say a majority because I wouldn't know how to even keep track anymore of the number of books coming out promoting the redefinition of Christian ethics, the redefinition of the

Christian gospel, the redefinition of Christian morality, etc. I wouldn't even know.

But I certainly am sent links to a large number of these things and hence, you know, just began yet another book on that subject on my last ride.

So I can honestly say that in relationship to Christian ministers in conservative,

Bible -believing, Reformed churches such as my own, that I'm probably in the top 2 % as far as the number of books and articles written against my position that I have actually read and read seriously in the sense of really seeking to understand what someone is saying.

As I said at the beginning of the last program, I think we need to hear what

Dr. Gushy is saying. We need to understand why he has adopted the position he has.

Only then can we, with sufficient gravity and integrity, say this is where Dr.

Gushy is wrong. This is what he has missed. This is what he has assumed and not proven. This is where he has been misled by Brownson or Boswell or whoever else as far as biblical information and historical information is concerned.

And so I just left the program running. I haven't touched anything. So we will be able to continue right on with where we were in Dr.

Gushy's comments that again were made at the Reformation Project Conference back in 2014.

So this is called Ending the Teaching of Contempt Against the Church's Sexual Minorities.

We have already criticized the assumptions underlying the title, but we press on.

We are, for those of you who are interested, 22 minutes and 3 seconds into the

YouTube posted version of this particular presentation.

...Christian leaders and reinforced by Christian tradition. It has been hard to find many dissenters to this tradition, as it has been grounded in knowledge sources seen to be at the very center of Christianity, Scripture, tradition, and the loudest leaders of the

Church. Everyone just knew, they just knew, that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people were worthy of the

Church's rejection and disdain. Now, notice, first of all, we should recognize, as I mentioned last time and as I'll probably mention again, that no one should claim that the majority of Bible -believing

Christians in 1970, let's go back 45 years.

Wow, that didn't seem like it was that long ago when I first came up with the date, but we went back, you know, 45 years.

I would not say that the majority of Bible -believing

Christians who would have answered the question that homosexuality was a sin before God could have even told you, outside of maybe

Romans 1 and somewhere in the Law of Moses, where that was taught.

And had probably not given any serious thought to any kind of homosexual apologetic, because there basically wasn't any homosexual apologetic.

That is a given. That does not mean that there had not been many serious

Christian leaders who had very fully examined and understood the reasons why homosexuality is sinful in God's sight and destructive to human existence, to human happiness, contentment, joy, and how it is a fundamental violation of the revelation of what

God's purpose in the creation of man as male and female is. There had been many who had done that.

There had been many who had recognized the biblical teaching concerning marriage, how marriage is the foundation of a culture, how marriage is meant for the full contentment of both man and woman in their roles within that relationship and in the rearing of children.

There had been many who had done these things and recognized that homosexuality is a fundamental rebellion against that created order of God, that it is truly narcissistic because it is falling in love with a mirror image of oneself.

It cannot produce life, will never be able to produce life, no matter how science attempts to pervert

God's created order and even succeeds in perverting that order. It will never be natural.

It will never be that which is in accord with God's creative design and hence which brings true contentment to the human soul.

And so that is all very true, but you'll notice that the framing of the presentation by Dr.

Gushie is to, in essence, dismiss the rebellion of homosexuality, the rejection of God's creative decree, and present not only the assumption that you can be a non -rebellious homosexual.

Now, I suppose I should, again, terminology is all the problem.

When we use that phraseology,

I've mentioned and some people really rejected this, some people continue to reject this, but there are different kinds, obviously, of homosexuals.

There are Christians who experience same -sex attraction, are honest about that, and seek assistance in resisting those temptations and those desires.

And they do not say to the church, you have to abandon your moral and ethical standards and embrace my sexual desires as a good thing and a gift from God.

That's very different than the gay Christian movement. That's very different than a Matthew Vines. That's very different than the

Justin Lees and the people who are forcing this agenda upon the church today.

Then you have those who claim to be Christians and yet demand that the gospel change to fit them.

And then you have the vast majority of homosexuals who do not claim to be Christians at all. And I would say the vast majority who would honestly recognize that they are doing what feels good to them.

And they are unconcerned about anything else. They do not desire monogamous lifelong relationships of any sort whatsoever.

All studies that I have ever seen have said that the vast majority, especially of male homosexuals, have an astonishingly large number of sexual partners in their lifetime.

And they're simply doing what they enjoy and what feels good to them. And it's interesting that so often we will hear people talking about the

LGBTQ movement.

And yet they skip what would have to be the ramifications of including the

B and the T, bisexual and transgender. The arguments for transsexualism would be completely different than anything you could possibly come up with in regards to homosexuality.

From a biblical perspective. But what about bisexuality? What about bisexuality?

Here it would seem that the arguments that are used by the

Matthew Vines and the Justin Lees, that this is all they've ever known. They have no desire whatsoever toward the woman.

As a male. Would completely overthrow any argumentation you could use for bisexuality.

Because now you have someone who has sexual desire for both genders.

And if it is discrimination, bigotry and contempt to say that homosexuality is wrong.

Then how could you address someone who desires to express their sexuality in such a way that would demand multiple partners?

Dr. Gushie is going to say, lifelong, monogamous, covenantal relationship, that's as far as he can go.

Well he just left off at least 95 % of the homosexual movement. Right there, just cut them off.

But what about bisexuals? Do they get to express their... How can they express who they say

God has made them to be within the parameters that Dr. Gushie is going to give?

They can't. It leads to a thruple, no matter what. Or a quadruple, or whatever.

For them to be able to express their love as they define it.

And here's the problem, rather than as God defines it. And as God defines it in scripture.

But going back to his presentation, he presents the homosexuals as these non -rebellious, made -this -way, innocent victims of the mean, horrible, nasty church that dares to take seriously the moral teaching of scripture in regards to God's own right to define what is and what is not proper human expression of sexuality.

And again, it's the one who frames the debate. You see it in the language right here.

If I take this amount of time, we're never going to get through this, so I apologize. Not just in their sexual desires or practices, but in their persons.

For some Christians, even today, and this is really sad, being anti -gay became woven into the heart of their understanding of Christian identity.

And their practice of Christian piety. Being anti -gay. In other words, affirming the entirety of the biblical revelation that allows us to even define not only just what sexual sin is, but what any sin is at all.

Notice the not -so -subtle, rather bold and obvious redefining of categories.

So if you hold firm to what Christians have always believed about how we define sin, just yesterday news broke, was it

Denmark? One of the northern European countries,

I should have brought it up, but one of the northern European countries passed a law outlawing bestiality.

You know why they outlawed bestiality? Animal abuse. Animal abuse.

Not because it is degrading to man to engage in such activities, but because it's degrading to the animals.

And the animals cannot give consent. You put that together with the recent judge's granting of habeas corpus to chimps, and all sanity has abandoned

Western culture. It's gone. And it's because the judges in Western culture have been thoroughly corrupted.

And corrupt judges are the very essence of God's judgment upon a people. And that's what we find ourselves in now.

But the point being, bestiality, the very same portion of text of the

Old Testament that identifies that as an abomination in God's sight.

Well, it doesn't actually use the term toiva, but as a sin in God's sight. That section is the very same section that does the same thing in regards to homosexuality.

So, what is the consistent basis that Dr. Gushie would offer for saying that bestiality is wrong if Leviticus, both 18 and 20, and there are subtle differences in the context between the two, clearly being the background of Paul's utilization of language in 1

Corinthians, Ars Iniquites, so on and so forth, together with Romans 1, in light of the

Jewish interpretation and understanding of these texts in Paul's day. You put all this together, and if that has become bigotry and contempt and is to be rejected, what's his basis for saying there's something wrong with bestiality?

Same thing as this country said, animal abuse? That's not what's wrong about bestiality.

That's not what's wrong about it. Sin is defined in regards to man's relationship to God.

Not the idea that you're engaging in animal abuse. Denmark, okay. So, I just wonder where the consistency would be.

The church's anti -LGBT or anti -sexual minority teaching was comprehensive. The church taught a disdain for LGBT people as a whole and all individuals in the group.

The church taught that LGBT people are morally inferior. The church sometimes taught... Morally inferior, that is, that they're engaged in sin.

Take any category of sin and put it into Dr. Gushy's mouth, and you will see the absurdity of this presentation.

I mean, let's... Since these movements are on, let's put in the polyamorists, the people going for the throuples, the people going for incestuous relationships, and the decriminalization of incestuous relationships.

Especially now, how about homosexual incestuous relationships? Why not? I mean, we don't want to be bigots, right?

All bets are off. So, put any of those groups in there, or make it something else.

You can put bestiality in there. You can put murder in there. You can put thievery in there. You can put gossiping in there.

I mean, the church is just guilty of marginalizing gossips. Oh, I mean, just how many times is that condemned in scripture, and we have hurt people?

I mean, they're just people who were just made to communicate news to other people.

They just find their joy and happiness in that. That's how they were made, Dr. Gushy. So, you can put any number of things.

And why would Dr. Gushy say no? Because he is assuming and not proving that homosexual orientation is a gift from God.

Now, I would like to think that someone who claims to be a Christian scholar might want to try to provide some kind of positive scriptural foundation for this.

He has not. He didn't in his book. He can't, because he knows there is none. It's the law of love, but even that does not provide any positive foundation.

Because Dr. Gushy is well aware there is not a single positive word about homosexuality in the corpus of scripture.

He knows that. He knows that. We all, hopefully, know that. LGBT people are evil.

Certainly it taught and sometimes still teaches that LGBT people are, by definition, excluded from heaven.

I've ever had a certain passage quoted at you related to that. Excluded from heaven.

Dr. Gushy, according to Christian theology, what excludes you from heaven? I mean, why are you even using this language?

You, of all people, should know that sin, every sin, quote -unquote, excludes from heaven.

But even using the term exclusion is a complete capitulation to the postmodern secular society.

Heaven is not owed to anyone, Dr. Gushy. The only ones who have access to heaven are those that scripture says are absolutely pure and righteous and just.

And hence the only way into the presence of God is by his means and by his grace.

So can you imagine, Dr. Gushy? Why would you say? Would you criticize someone who would tell a murderer, an unrepentant murderer, who is awaiting execution, well, we're sorry that we've excluded you from heaven?

What kind of language is that? It's not, Dr. Gushy, Christian language. That's the language of the world you are using.

Why? Why, sir? What has happened?

Well, I think you say what happened. I think you tell us what happened. And just as Dr.

Brownson and so many others, there is a non -biblical, non -theological, non -historical, and should be non -morality -changing and ethics -changing personal experience that changed your views.

And now you speak as those who oppose the Christian faith. Why, sir? Why the double standard?

Why this language, excluding from heaven? Any sin excludes from heaven because God is holy.

And if you don't believe that, sir, then why was there a cross? Why was there a cross?

That's why eventually, Dr. Gushy, this, embracing this, has to eventually bring about a denial of the fundamental necessity of atonement.

Because not only can you no longer define sin, but you certainly can no longer provide a meaningful foundation for the wrath of God against sin, and hence the necessity of that great act of the self -giving of the

Son of God in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The Church warned its adherents about associating with LGBT people.

The Church at various times ascribed particular vices to LGBT people, including sexual degeneracy.

The Church at times was willing to welcome individual LGBT people into its fellowship, but this welcome was equivocal.

LGBT people were often relegated to second -class status, which surfaced especially in relation to questions of leadership in the

Church. This is so horribly forcing an attempted parallel that it almost becomes comic book -like.

They were allowed in, but only on certain conditions. You mean like repentance? Like accepting the reality that they have sinned?

Is that what you're talking about? Again, any quote -unquote group of sinners you could name could be put into the words of the speaker here.

What does that tell you? Amazing. And often this half -welcome was withdrawn.

Parenthesis here. One Jewish reader of this lecture commented to me that in this sense, it was easier in most eras of Christianity for Jews to find full and unequivocal welcome in the

Church than it has ever been for gay and lesbian people to find full and unequivocal welcome. He said, conversion meant that a

Jew became a Christian. But conversion doesn't mean that a gay person becomes a straight person. Not that people have a tribe.

Well, I'm sorry, Dr. Gershey, I did not find your comments on 1

Corinthians chapter 6 to be sufficient to keep me from reminding you of its message here.

Such were some of you. Not such are some of you.

And if you ever, and I think you're under moral obligation to do this,

I'll be perfectly honest with you and we'll expand upon this more toward the end. But if you were to ever put yourself in the position of actually defending these comments in formal scholarly debate, and if I were to have that opportunity, one of the questions

I would be asking you is why, in light of your comments, the

Apostle Paul used the past tense, the imperfect, rather than the present tense, when he said, and such were some of you.

Because it seems that your entire position now would require the changing of the tense of that verb.

Now, my guess would be that you would get around this by saying, well, we're not sure what utam arsenikoitai utam malakoi.

I don't have the text in front of me, but off the top of my head. You would probably question the meaning of the underlying terms, though their meaning is actually rather obvious.

And I would just simply say to you, Dr. Koshy, are you really certain, in light of Paul's deep familiarity with the language of the

Greek subjugant, you would have to be absolutely certain that he could not have had homosexuality in mind when he said arsenikoitai.

You'd have to be able to say, there is no way it could be that. Not, well, it might not be that. That's not enough.

That's insufficient. And so you truly are saying that we are engaging in sin to continue to believe what the apostles said to the

Corinthians. That's how we're hearing it. I'd be interested in how you would respond to that.

While the leaders of the church almost never explicitly taught that its members should perpetrate violence on LGBT people, they were and sometimes still are victimized by outbreaks of violence.

Schoolyard bullying was common. Name -calling was constant. Social separation was enforced.

Preaching regularly communicated disdain. Few Christians wanted to be seen as too cozy with LGBT people.

Isn't it interesting that that's exactly what's happening in reverse today? Give $2 ,000 to a political initiative in 2008 to maintain marriage as the only rational definition that can possibly be had, and you'll be fired.

Dr. Gushie, you know that in most secular universities, even in the

United States today, I could never get a job no matter what my qualifications were. Because I've said the things

I've said, right? And there would be most people in academia would never want to associate with me.

And I'm called a bigot and a homophobe all the time. I realize they're utterly irrational and infantile accusations, but that is the nature of the totalitarianism that you recognize.

In the article you wrote, I think it was just last week, wasn't it? You recognize the dangers of totalitarianism, but you helped grease the skids, sir.

You've actually helped to speed this along. You're being used in that way. You don't recognize that?

For fear of sharing in their moral taint and losing the support of their own family and friends, the very words used to describe

LGBT people functioned as slurs. When LGBT people were excluded or targeted by the state, few

Christians would stand up for the victims of this targeting. From the perspective of our sexual minorities,

Christianity has been both ubiquitous and dangerous. The church's Bible, cross, tradition, clergy, and scholars have brought harm.

Have brought harm. This is the whole thing now. This is a complete capitulation to the spirit of our age, which is, if you identify the behavior, indeed the entire worldview orientation, of an individual as opposed to God's will, if you offend them by so doing, you are harming them.

Now, they can harm you back all they want. I mean, if we wanted to play the blame game, if we wanted to play the victim game,

I mean, that's easy to do. For some reason, it only goes one direction. But the spirit of our age is, thou shalt not offend.

Thou shalt not say, that is wrong, unless it's something Christian, and that's okay.

Done them harm. So it's harmful to tell the murderer, that he will abide under the wrath of God, unless he repents and turns.

Is that harmful to murderers? Is it harmful to thieves, to tell them that they will abide under the wrath of God?

How about those that are disobedient to parents, sir? Gossips, slanderers, backbiters, liars.

You of all people, sir, know all about the vice lists that are found in the

New Testament, primarily in Paul. You know all about them. I would like to assume you have done extensive work in the meanings and uses of those terms within the context in which it was written.

Are all vice lists harmful, sir? How do you, again, you're assuming that homosexuality is a gift from God and it is not sinful, it is not something that God's word proscribes.

That's your assumption. But you and I both know you have never been able to provide a meaningful argument for that outside of, we need to experience these individuals, we need to get to know them, we need to listen to their stories, and when we do so, well, again, a whole bunch of names, a whole bunch of groups, we could plug into that particular formula, which will eviscerate that biblical command and that biblical command and this one and that one until there is no biblical command left.

That's where this seems to be leading. Do you know, sir? Do you know,

Dr. Gushie, where do you draw the line? To bring harm. LGBT people, millions raised in the church and deeply committed to Jesus, have certainly known of the beautiful teachings of Christianity.

They've heard the great sayings, love your neighbor as yourself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.

But LGBT people, very much the least of these in Christendom, rarely experienced such love toward themselves.

No golden rule, no love, no mercy from the Christians who heard it. Please understand what is being said.

To preach the gospel and to call repentance and faith is to not show love. Now, he may be talking solely about people who wrap their self -righteous robes around themselves, do not recognize their own sin, but he's not making that distinction.

He's saying the church. He's drawing, he's painting with the broadest brush possible.

It's a fire hose, not even a brush. He's not saying there have been

Christians who have been grossly insensitive and self -righteous. No one would argue that, but it also wouldn't advance your position.

There's something else, Dr. Gushie. You talked about Jesus. You said they had heard about the love of Jesus, and you're going to talk a lot about how unchrist -like someone like myself is for daring to say that homosexuality, for daring to question the validity of the claims of Christian experience of a person who refuses to repent and believe the entirety of the gospel.

You will say I am unchristian for this. And so I want to ask a question. I've already told you one of the questions

I would ask you, and this is one that I've repeated over and over again. I have not hidden this in the darkness.

I have pointed out that this is what I would ask of anybody,

Matthew Vines, whoever, if I ever had the opportunity, because it just doesn't seem like they want to engage these issues and to engage these topics, but in public debate anyways.

But here's the question, Dr. Gushie. This is a question I have for you. Do you still continue to believe in the

Orthodox doctrine of who Jesus Christ was, that he was the

God -man, that he was the incarnate Son of God? Assuming that you do, assuming that you do, let us take your own claim that homosexuals represent 5 % of the human population.

I think that's inflated, but let's go with it. One out of every 20 individuals born, designed by God to express their sexual desire, that are not in the creation of life, the forming of a family that will provide the basis of the next generation or anything like that, instead created by God to desire their same gender.

Is this a new thing? Is this a situation where possibly there's been some kind of evolutionary mutation over time to where there weren't these people back then, but there are now?

I would have a hard time thinking that you would make that kind of presentation. If that's the case, then if one out of every 20, 5 % of the people to whom

Jesus ministered were actually homosexuals, created by him in that way, then when he preached to the 5 ,000, just the men, what would that be, 250?

250 male homosexuals, not including the women and children, which would have, let's say it doubles it, 500.

500 individuals that Jesus knew, because he knew it was in the heart of man.

You can't deny that. 500 individuals who, from your perspective, longed for homosexual marriage, longed for the acceptance of the synagogue, had been harmed from the days of Moses.

In fact, some had been stoned. Some had been executed, driven from their people.

Some had left under cover of darkness because they didn't want to die, but they knew what the penalty of the law was, and so they left for other lands.

They were driven out of the covenant people of God. Evidently, this was all harmful from your perspective. And in the days of Jesus, they would not have been welcomed in the synagogue.

That's a given. I think you know enough about Jewish history. You're certainly one who's familiar with the

Mishnah and Gemara. You've done the study, right?

Certainly in the writings of your books, you've done this. So, Dr. Kashy, here's my question for you.

If Jesus knew it was in the hearts of men, and he knew that even in that one instance in John chapter 6, that there were 500 people in front of him, harmed, hurt, why was he silent?

Why do you never say a word? In fact, what's more, why when he did, he was given the perfect opportunity.

In Matthew chapter 19, he simply reiterated, in fact, strengthened, repeated the constant, contiguous, traditional belief of the

Jewish people regarding the unqualified sinfulness of homosexuality and the normative nature of monogamous, heterosexual marriage, covenantal relationship.

Matthew chapter 19. Going all the way back to a creation ordinance foundation.

You see, Dr. Kashy, I hear people in your movement, and you now have joined it, so it's your movement.

I hear people in your movement saying all the time that, well, people back then just didn't know.

Now, this fundamentally denies the concept of the inspiration of Scripture because if we believe that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit, they didn't have to have a modern PhD in whatever psychological field you want to apply to.

Didn't the Holy Spirit know about homosexuality? Didn't God know the truth of these things?

And if Jesus was God in human flesh, didn't he know? I hear it always being said, well,

Paul, you know, he wouldn't have known. Well, I would dispute that. I think Dr. Gagnon has done a very good job in demonstrating that he would have known, and not just he, but others.

But leaving Paul aside, let's talk Jesus here. Because if you're still an

Orthodox Baptist, you believe in the Trinity. You believe

Jesus was the incarnate Son of God. The Bible says he knows what fills the hearts of men.

Hence, he would have known. He's the creator. He would have known exactly how he made these individuals, and he left them alone.

Is that what you're telling me? See, Dr.

Gush, that's why I have said there is no stopping point in the trajectory you are on.

It leads eventually to a complete abandonment of the Christian faith. It has to.

Because yours is not a slippery slope situation. You jumped off a cliff. And there are no stopping points from the top of the cliff to the bottom.

But I would really like to know, how do you deal with this?

How do you deal with Jesus' complete, from your perspective, abandonment of that one twentieth of the human population that he encountered over and over again and never said a word in defense of?

I'd like to know. I think you owe us all. I think you're under moral obligation.

Having done this, having published the book, I would say to you as an ethicist that you have an ethical obligation to respond and to engage the subject.

Not in a monologue, sir. I'd like to know how you think that works out.

Proclaim these beautiful words and then withdrew them quickly in the presence of LGBT people.

So now I have made a historical analogy, but immediately I again know that analogies have their limits.

So let me make a couple of comments about that. First of all, I am not claiming that LGBT people have faced genocide, but it is true, as you know, that it remains physically dangerous to be a sexual minority or gender identity minority in many places.

Not just around the world, but here. I have students from other parts of the world who come to my seminary who tell me of routine violence inflicted against sexual minorities in their home countries.

And I understand such violence has been discussed here as well. Yes, there has been no genocide, but still.

We speak of a group of people that even today, even in our country, sometimes hear people speaking about them with quotes from Scripture suggesting that they should all be executed.

That raises the issue of what happened to a preacher in London, Dr.

Gushy. I'd be interested again in your own understanding of this.

Do you feel that the preacher in London who quoted Leviticus chapter 20, verse 13, should have been fined,

I think it was around $2 ,000 if I recall correctly, by a Muslim judge, interestingly enough, for having quoted that text.

Now, what basis would you have for addressing that?

Now, of course, this raises that other subject that has been so much front and center over the past number of months amongst conservative reformed folks in regards to theonomy and regards to especially the application not of God's law, but of the punishments of God's law.

And the reality that when we seek to apply

God's moral law outside of God's covenant people, that this raises all sorts of issues regarding how punishment is to be dealt with, that not every sin is a crime or vice versa.

And the issue of proper justice and who can exercise proper justice, especially once you have an unregenerate government and representatives thereof.

That's another issue. But the question that I would have for Dr.

Gushie in light of this statement is would you likewise say, therefore, that it is completely inappropriate to say that the wages of sin is death?

I mean, if the specific application is inappropriate, is the universal application just as inappropriate?

And therefore, what should be the

Christian proclamation? Do you still believe that sinners will die under the wrath of God?

I cannot imagine that most who hold this position actually believe in some place called hell.

It would seem to me that minimally inclusivism is pretty much a foregone conclusion here.

And maybe a form of universalism would fit much better.

And it does seem to me that the gay Christian movement has no possible mechanism for remaining orthodox in any of its expressions.

And I think time will just simply prove that one out very, very clearly.

I once was to be the next guest on a Christian radio show, and I was waiting, you know, you wait on the phone, and I heard a

Christian preacher say, well, I just think they should all be executed. And this was just a few years ago.

Unbelievable. Unthinkable. I think the analogy holds. The analogy breaks down in an interestingly different way.

If a Jewish child, when a Jewish child, discovered the contempt of the Christian world in which he or she lived, he could at least go home and find support with his family.

But a gay or lesbian child, transgender child, discovering the contempt of the wider

Christian world, has often faced an even more devastating lack of support at home. There was no refuge, not even at home.

And this is where you really start, hopefully, understanding why this argument, why this presentation, let me change, let me change that,

I withdraw the term argument. It's not an argument. Arguments require logic.

Arguments require the presentation of evidence and following a chain of reasoning to the appropriate conclusion based upon the laws of logic.

This is a presentation designed purposefully and acknowledged by Dr.

Gushie to speak primarily to the emotion and to the heart.

And this is why it is a presentation that is winning the day. People have said, well, the redefinition of marriage is a foregone conclusion.

I would happen to agree. I would happen to agree. I think it'll, if it's not this Supreme Court decision, if they find some weaselly way out, we all know it's going to happen.

I mean, I think it's going to happen this summer. But if they find a way out, it's going to happen within the next few years.

Foregone conclusion. Doesn't make it moral, doesn't make it right. Abortion's been around forever now, and we continue to fight that battle as well.

But the reality is that when he speaks in this fashion about this issue, and I'm going to,

I'm going to, I mean, when you talk about the emotions in this way, and you begin with the assumption, these are innocent individuals who were simply born this way.

There's no discussion here of young people who are rebelling against parental authority, young people who are utilizing their awakening hormonal activity as a mechanism for rebelling against parental authority.

That doesn't even come in here. And are there all sorts of parents who are the children of other parents who did not teach them solid foundations and solid understanding of the relationship of man and woman.

It's a fallen world. No parent is ever perfect. And many parents, many parents bring mockery on the words father and mother as they're defined in scripture.

In fact, from a perfection standpoint, we all do. But this presentation is way overboard in that it doesn't even acknowledge any of those things.

It's simply the innocent, morally good,

God -created -me -this -way victims of the nasty, terrible, horrible, hate -filled, bigoted, should -have -known -better church.

I mean, there's not even an attempt at balance here. There really isn't.

But this is the presentation that is winning our day because we now live amongst a people who are not convinced by logical argumentation because they've not been taught how to think, they've been taught what to think.

And it is not, it is not a Christian virtue to be controlled by your emotions.

There is a Greek term, sophronosmos. Sophronosmos, look it up.

It's discipline, soundness of mind, sobriety. The biblical exhortation is that we're not to think with our emotions.

We are to think in a way that reflects the mind of Christ within us. We do not suppress our emotions, but we control them in light of the guiding factors given to us by God himself.

But you need to understand, why do we see the younger generation, the millennials, showing themselves willing to be literally led by the nose, by emotional argumentation that should be rejected by any rational thinking person?

Because they're not rational thinking persons anymore. They've not been taught. They have been taught the exact opposite of that, especially in state -sponsored educational centers called the public school system.

And that's why they are not only willing to arrogantly stand up and call all generations before them ignorant bigots on this subject and to overthrow all of the ancient landmarks because they're so much wiser than all the rest of us, but that's also why they're abandoning any meaningful foundation for liberty.

They're willing to hand themselves over to the state. The state will take care of me.

Well, difficult days are coming.

Difficult days are coming. The analogy breaks down, but this time more constructively, and I think gives us hope.

The unchristlike teaching of contempt for Jews has been discredited. No mainstream

Christian leader that I know of teaches it anymore, at least not here. People have been saying to me, you know, the

Bible doesn't change. Doc, the Bible doesn't change. No, the

Bible doesn't change, but what the Bible was understood to mean in relation to the Jewish people changed a very great deal in a very short period of time.

Now remember, last program, we demonstrated the fundamental difference, that the application of the same methods of hermeneutics and exegesis to the key text that he himself presented in comparison to the text on homosexuality

CONFIRM that homosexuality is opposed to God's creative purpose for mankind.

Fundamental flaw. Fundamental flaw. I don't think anybody in that room was overly concerned in testing his thesis at that point.

Fundamental flaw. In my view, the unchristlike teaching of contempt for LGBT people is in the process of being discredited, of breaking down, even as we speak.

It is breaking down. How would that happen? In what context?

I would... Everyone listening to this who listens to this program regularly, and I'm hoping that many people are actually going to be watching this in the days and weeks and months to come who have not seen

The Dividing Line before, not familiar with the work that we've done, maybe not familiar with the debates we've been doing on this, literally, for years.

I mean, the Barry Lynn debate was 14 years ago, wasn't it? Yeah, so a decade and a half ago

I was dealing with this. And...

So, you may not be aware of this, but those who do know me know I have said that we will experience a tsunami of apostasy on this issue

Dr. Gushy is just one element of that wave of collapse on biblical morality and ethics and a biblical worldview in regards to homosexuality.

Why? Is it because their arguments are so strong and compelling? Absolutely, positively not.

In fact, I can say without the slightest fear of exaggeration or contradiction that every argument that has been offered by the homosexual movement has been thoroughly debunked and refuted.

Thoroughly debunked and refuted. And I can honestly say that one side is willing to demonstrate that publicly.

We have standing challenges to Matthew Vines and standing challenges to James Brownson.

And certainly I have a standing challenge to you Dr. Gushy to engage in moderated formal public debate on these subjects.

And if we want to get as specific as to debate single texts I know

I'd be willing to do that and I can guarantee you Michael Brown would be willing to do that too and I'm sure that Dr.

Gagnon would as well. I'm not going to speak for him but something tells me that he would be more than happy to do that as well.

So when he says it's breaking down what he means is that in light of capitulation to societal pressure and a desire to get along in the society more and more religious bodies will collapse on this issue and that's what

I've been saying all along. But there can never be there can never be a parallel here.

Because it was gross misinterpretation of John 8 44 and the other relevant texts that led to the anti -Semitism that was documented earlier in the presentation.

It is not misinterpretation of these texts in regards to homosexuality that leads to the church's recognition that is contrary to God's will.

So there is no parallel. There can be no parallel. Every year elements of this tradition lose ground.

You can actually watch it happen. I am now confident that Christianity is in the process of undergoing the same repudiation of an unchrist -like body of tradition today in regards to our sexual minorities as happened 50 years ago in regards to anti -Semitism.

Our sexual minorities. So who do you include in that? You include transgenderism?

You include bisexuality? I don't know how you can include bisexuality, sir.

You're the ones that talk about monogamous but that doesn't work with a bisexual person. Does it include those who wish to engage in intergenerational sex?

Pedophilia? Incest? How about bestiality? Interspecies love? Why not?

Once you have decided that this is an unbiblical perspective why not?

Why not? That must be the question that is asked. It is happening. Which is one reason people are so uncomfortable because the change is invisible.

So this is the point of my comparison and I want everybody in the world to hear me say this. Tweet me.

Facebook me. Video me. I am comparing two different unchrist -like bodies of Christian tradition.

One of which has been discredited and abandoned. The other of which needs to be and is in the process of being discredited and abandoned.

Okay, so again. Remember, we are always told you Bible -believing

Christians you paint everything in black and white and you just can't get along and there is a third way and all the rest of this stuff.

Dr. Gushy is saying that we are in sin. That what we are teaching is an absolute error.

It is not possibly right. It is not a different view. It is unchrist -like.

Just want to make sure you understand that that is what he is saying. Amen? Amen.

You can amen. I am liking this. Let's do some more, alright? We must celebrate the progress that is being made day by day in repudiating the teaching of contempt against that part of the human family that is

LGBT. But we also must finish the job as quickly as we can before another child gets kicked out of their house.

Another child feels like they have to kill themselves. Another family gets fractured. Another gifted

Christian is booted out of the church. We have to finish the job. And that is what this conference is about.

I talk about how change is happening. How the discrediting and abandoning of parts of the anti -LGBT teaching of contempt is happening in my book,

Changing Our Mind, which some of you have heard of. Progress.

Today, leaders of many traditionalist Christian communities try not to verbally stigmatize or demonize gays and lesbians, transgender people anymore.

That is progress. Some. Today, previous culture wars, fights that traditionalist

Christians once led have almost been forgotten. Remember the Disney boycott? Gays in the military?

Anybody talking about that anymore? No. Anybody talking about that anymore?

Well, there certainly are, but he has a point. But does that make it right?

I mean, if a society becomes so numb to its own evil, that it's no longer discussed by people, does that make the evil less evil?

Of course not. So because a society goes a particular direction, that makes it morally good?

This man's an ethicist? Wow. Okay. Some traditionalists are suggesting that the fights over gay marriage are doing the church's mission more harm than good, and they're calling for the church to stand down on that.

Change is definitely happening in relation to accepting well -established clinical research and scientific claims about sexual orientation and gender identity.

This is undoubtedly related to... I would like to know what these are, because, folks, just as I am sick and tired of the consensus of the scientific community that ignores the evidence of intelligent design, sick of the consensus of the scientific community that ignores the reality concerning the nature of nature itself and the climate in which we live,

I am likewise even significantly more sick and tired of the consensus of the psychological community.

Especially when you read about what really happened in the 1970s in regards to homosexuality and the manual that psychiatrists and psychologists utilize in regards to psychiatric disease, so on and so forth.

It's all politics and money. It's all politics and money.

And anybody... It's already well known. You can't publish a paper in most scholarly journals that documents the reality of intelligent design and God's creatorship.

That's a given. You know that. We know how many people have been fired for daring to just follow the facts to their conclusion in that area.

We also know you cannot possibly do that within secular universities in regards to homosexuality.

You cannot speak the truth about homosexuality in the secular universities. It is the holy grail. You can't do it.

You will not survive. You will be fired. And you will not be published. So, you can talk all you want about, well, look.

It's the consensus. Of course it's a consensus. It's an enforced consensus. There is a consensus that God didn't exist in the

USSR under the Soviet Union. Big deal. Doesn't mean a thing.

And neither does this claim either. People more often getting to know lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

In 1993, 22 % of Americans reported having a close friend or family member who was gay or lesbian.

In 2013, that number had risen to 65%. That's been transformative, I think. More traditionalist

Christians than ever accept, oh well, I guess, a small portion of human beings simply are of same -sex orientation.

Fewer make the ungrounded claim that sexual orientation is willful perversity chosen and changeable.

How about a mixture thereof? How about a small percentage that do experience same -sex attraction from their youngest ages, but many others that do not?

And how about not defining mankind based upon his sexual desires? How about having a higher view of mankind than merely an animal who is wired in a certain way?

Ah, well, you know. Reparative or ex -gay treatment has collapsed in credibility.

Really? Well, there certainly have been people, Alan Chambers comes to mind, who have done tremendous damage, but funny thing,

I keep hearing all about former homosexuals. Now, of course, from their perspective, you must deny there is any such thing.

Because if the meme is that it's all wired, it's all genetic, then there can't be any such thing as a former homosexual.

But, again, and such were some of you. Seems to be a biblical perspective.

I thought we were talking in a church here. Even on the traditionalist

Christian side, more and more people will agree that there is such a thing as gay people. Imagine that, you know? The flippancy aside, you mean people who experience same -sex attraction?

Well, yeah. Yeah, there are. But how about recognition that experiencing temptation is not relevant to the moral acting upon that temptation?

You are an ethicist, sir. You're fully aware of the difference, right? Can I say something?

You know one of the reasons why this presentation has the power that it does is because you've got to understand that what he's saying right now is something that we have a problem with.

I am concerned by a certain element, stream of comments that I see, things that are said to me by believing

Christians in churches. And I just have to ask everybody.

It's so easy. Well, let me draw an interesting parallel since we're into parallels here.

Let me draw a parallel that Dr. Gushy could never draw because I'm bringing it from my own perspective here.

Right before the program started, someone posted an amazing video, a letter from the people of the cross to ISIS.

I don't know if you saw, I retweeted it right before the program started. Really amazing.

And it's a powerful video basically seeking to present a gospel message to ISIS itself.

And I am very concerned about how many

Christians I meet who would be scandalized by that video because they hate

ISIS. Now, on the level of the crimes against humanity that ISIS is engaged in, that's fully understandable.

But what they... I get blank stares. I get resistance.

I get pushback. When I point out that there was once a man who watched a

Christian stoned to death. Have you seen stoning? I'm not going to recommend it to you.

But there are a lot of examples on the net. You can see stoning.

It's still done today. And it's horrific. Especially the way the Muslims do it.

Where they bury you up to your waist. You can't... There's no place you can go. And then pummel you with rocks until you're a bloody pulp.

It's... Wow. And there was a man who stood by and watched as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ was reduced to a bloody pulp and his life was taken from him by religious people.

And his name was Saul of Tarsus. And I just wonder if many of the people

I see on Facebook who post stuff about nuking the entire

Middle East ever stop to think about what the early church experienced and what it is like to be part of a martyr church.

That's why I'm so absolutely outrageously disgusted by the Shabbats. Theodore and Waleed Shabbat.

And their call for the Christian Jihad and the Crusaderism and all this other stuff.

But man, I'll tell you, I bet you they're getting money for it. I bet you they're getting donations. Don't know what they're doing with them, but I bet you they're getting donations.

There's a... I just have to ask a question. And I have to ask this of all of us. What if there are people in your congregation that are struggling with sexual sin?

Could it be the reason they remain quiet is because they're absolutely 100 ,000 % convinced that they can never approach you about it?

Now they may be wrong about that. They may have misjudged you. There can be all sorts of reasons.

But I just simply have to ask all of us, when you think of the language that we use, even the offhanded comments that are made, the slurs that are used regularly, that's not a

Christian virtue. There is no meaningful connection between using slurs and the

Christian recognition that homosexuality is an utter violation of God's law and God's decree.

You do not have to use that kind of language simply because you recognize that homosexuality is wrong.

And so it just seems to me that there should be a relationship between our recognition that if we see how important this is, that it's a gospel issue, that we have to stand here.

There should be a direct relationship between that and how sensitive we are to providing unnecessary ammunition to the other side, especially in the form of smoke shells, because they will use that to muddy the issue, to make it all that less clear to our culture.

And so I think we need to hear this criticism and guard our own tongues when it comes to the type of language we use and how easy it is, especially when you're constantly being demonized by the other side.

And we are. We're constantly being called bigots and we're into discrimination and we're homophobes and we need to be locked in the closet ourselves.

That's what they want. It's real easy to respond to that in kind.

We don't have that option. We don't have that option. And I think there is a direct relationship to how we look at Islam.

We have... What ISIS is doing shows that their religion has no connection to the heart, that it's vile.

It allows them to express the most evil corners of their depraved and debauched nature, just as the

Crusades did for others, just as the Crusades did for others.

But we do not have the right to respond, even to ISIS.

If you have not prayed that God would first convert before killing, then you have blood on your hands.

You have blood on your hands. Think about it. That relationships of LGBT people should not be criminalized, that there should not be employment or housing discrimination, job discrimination, that they should not be bullied, that they shouldn't have to be afraid of violence, that they should not be blamed for Hurricane Katrina or the next bad thing that happens, that they should not be stigmatized or treated with contempt.

Now, could I blame for Hurricane Katrina? Wasn't that Pat Robertson?

Now, whenever anybody thinks that they can come up with the specific reason why something happened,

I get very, very uncomfortable. But notice what then happens. Notice the extreme to which we've been pushed.

What can you no longer say? You can no longer speak about the wrath of God against the sin of a nation.

You can no longer say. When we see what we are seeing, when you see the general breakdown of the morality of our nation and the fact that...

Well, let me use a good example here. I don't remember if it was this morning's edition of the briefing.

I listened to two editions of the briefing this morning, this morning's, and I was rowing, and I needed to go through two editions.

So I went back to one that I didn't recognize. It may have been while I was in Spain that it had been on.

And so I listened to one that I hadn't heard before. And in one of those two,

Dr. Moeller was talking about some kind of a survey that was done of 18 to 25 -year -olds,

I believe, college campuses, I think, in regards to marriage, happiness, so on and so forth.

The vast majority of the millennial generation, marriage, maybe when

I feel like it, has nothing to do with my sexual activities.

Children, maybe someday. But if not, no big deal.

There has been a fundamental reorientation of the moral and ethical understanding of this younger generation.

It has... We live in a day where we are seeing the seeds of our own culture's destruction germinating right before our eyes.

No culture can survive when its young people have no interest in continuing it and are only concerned about their, quote, happiness.

That culture is absolutely doomed. Now, from a

Christian worldview perspective... Sorry, Dr. Moeller. From a Christian worldview perspective, what is the reason for that?

My friends, it's the wrath of God. How else can you read the Bible and not see the wrath of God in all of this?

It is an abandonment of simple, common, created sense for a people to stop having families and for a people to think that, well, you know, if it happens, it happens.

Well, I can always abort the thing, right? That anti -humanism...

And that's what it is. That anti -human attitude comes from the wrath of God.

And a people who will embrace, as a nation, rebellion against God's revealed truth will receive punishment from God.

And so what Dr. Gushy has said... Dr. Gushy, can you say that God punishes a rebellious people?

Or, from your perspective, is God blessing America for abortion, divorce, rampant, constant sexual immorality, greed, gluttony?

Is God blessing us for all these things? Or is God just on vacation in the Bahamas? And it almost seems to me like deism would be a better theological foundation for a lot of this stuff.

It just makes me wonder. It just makes me wonder. That's progress.

That is ground that needs to be held. But still, all is not well.

Teaching and behavior that harms our own sexual minorities, especially in the life of the church, has not disappeared.

Not by a long shot. LGBT people are still not treated as equals, as kin in the family of faith.

They are often rejected by their families and churches and schools and friends. Their spiritual gifts continue to be blocked.

In just two weeks, since my own announcement that I have decided to stand in full solidarity with LGBT Christians, I have heard from scores of young people all over the world telling me their harrowing tales of rejection and harm.

It's been amazing. Now, if we just played that, just that one clip, without identifying what movement he was associated with, could those words have been spoken at a meeting of the, albeit still small, groups of people who are attempting to convince our society that interspecies affection and love is appropriate?

How about those who believe that intergenerational love is appropriate?

Could they not have been spoken there? Would there not be people who would contact him and say,

I was rejected by my family when they found out that Daddy and I were in love?

We were rejected by everyone in our family. We were harmed. We were hurt. Is that not what would happen?

So, how do you make the differentiation? Well, they're made this way. But you don't even try to substantiate that.

It keeps coming back to the same thing. But you can see how, assuming those things, you can then make all sorts of arguments that would then be utilizable and are being utilized by all sorts of other sexual minorities.

When does that, you know, what's the next after Q? Which is either queer or questioning, depending on who you're talking to.

Is it going to become LGBTQI? Intergenerational?

Or LGBTQP? At least P is a little bit more in that same area of the alphabet.

Might be a little bit easier. Polly? Thrupple? Oh, it's that slippery slope thing.

It's not a slippery slope. It's a cliff. It's a cliff. There is no slope. That's why it's happening so fast.

This must not continue. Increasingly, my focus moves to the continued suffering of young people.

I actually think that strategically and just humanly, this is a part of the story that needs to be lifted up.

You hear what he just said? He's just told us this is the kind of argument we can use to marginalize the other side.

This is the kind of argument that will resonate with our society today.

Why? Because it's all based on the emotions. It's all based on the emotions.

And it does work. It does work. I mean, just watch how many videos you can find of 19 -year -old university girls talking to a street preacher about how offended they are about what that guy said.

And you will not find a scintilla of logical thought going on there. But she votes.

There you go. There you go. So, let me tell you kind of what

I'm saying these days. Have you considered the

Center for American Progress' research on LGBT homeless youth? Let me tell you about this.

Homeless youth are unaccompanied young people between the ages of 12 and 24 for whom it is not possible to safely live with a relative or in another safe living arrangement.

Generally, the research says there's two major types of homeless youth, runaway youth and what are called, sadly, throwaway youth.

The Center for American Progress estimates there are between 2 .4 million and 3 .7

million homeless youth in America right now. Probably some in this city, undoubtedly. LGBT young people are vastly overrepresented among the homeless youth population.

Did you know that? I bet you did. Several state and local studies from across the

United States have found shockingly disproportionate rates of homelessness among LGBT youth compared to non -LGBT youth.

One standard estimate is that about 40%. Okay, could

I just throw a thought in here? Dr. Gushy, what if homosexuality is not a healthy, good, appropriate behavior?

Like mankind has believed all along. What if it is a part of a whole series of activities, behaviors, and attitudes that are damaging to a young person?

Could it be that if these numbers are correct that that's further evidence of the fact that we should be seeking to warn people against embracing these behaviors and should be seeking to help people to break out of addiction to these behaviors?

You just said we can't do that. You just said that's been discredited. And yet now you're talking about all these people that, well, here's the result, evidently, of your entire foundational assumption.

And that is, well, they're made that way. God made them that way. There's no other way to view this.

And so, no, we can't help them. In fact, it's okay that the federal government is now saying that that should be illegal.

Even if they want help, even if they want assistance in not experiencing these desires and how to handle these things, you can't do it.

That's been discredited. Didn't you just tell us that? I think you did.

I didn't get as far today. I did too much talking. I only got to 34 minutes and 56 seconds, so that's basically,

I only did 12 minutes, did 22 the first time around. We only have 28 minutes left, so that's probably two more programs or so.

We're going to press on. We're doing 90 minutes at a shot. And if I recall correctly, when we responded to Matthew Vines, his presentation was an hour and it ended up being five.

So we're pretty much on track, I would say. I was going to just suggest to that last point, what's to say how many of those kids are out in the street because their home life was a bisexual parent who wouldn't leave the child alone and they were driven out of the home and this is the result of it.

You can't even go there. You can't even ask the question. The assumption automatically is nasty, bigoted attitudes against innocent people.

And that's what you have going on. Alright, we will continue our response to Dr. Gushie and examination of his claims next time on The Dividing Line.

I know this is a lot of material, but I don't think I even have to defend doing so now.

You all know Supreme Court in a matter of days will probably be fundamentally changing the form of our society.

The damage, irreparable, outside of a sovereign and merciful and gracious act of God.