01 Apr 1996 A Pastoral Response to Homosexual Apologists – April 1996

(A New Visions Commentary published April 1996 by Project 21, a project of The National Center for Public Policy Research, 20 F Street NW, Suite 700 , Washington, D.C. 20001, (202) 507-6398, Fax (301) 498-1301, E-Mail [email protected]. New Visions Commentaries are the opinion of their author and not necessary those of Project 21.)

What has American society come to when it is necessary to defend, in religious circles no less, what is biblically self-evident? The issue at hand is: should the Church embrace homosexuality? The push for moral legitimacy for homosexuality is the most serious threat to date to the Judeo-Christian moral code that has defined this nation’s sense of right and wrong. Let there be no doubt, many Americans are in a state of moral confusion.

Like most social movements, homosexual advocates are looking to seize the moral high ground in order to secure for themselves the necessary political capital that will enable them to write the country a new moral code. The ultimate source of moral legitimacy is religious acceptance. This is why today the Church is under pressure to accept homosexuality as normal.

Sadly, I must report some churches have given in to the demands of homosexual advocates. Specifically, here in California, members of the congregation of the American Baptist Church of the West have been forced to expel four area congregations for adopting a policy that welcomed homosexuals as members without teaching that homosexual activity is sinful. These churches chose to be politically correct instead of theologically correct.

The attempted march of homosexual advocates must be stopped dead in its tracks and reversed before they succeed in imposing their, at best amoral, and at worst, immoral relativistic values on the rest of the country. The weapon of choice we must use in the “Culture War” for the heart and soul of American is reasoned, passionate argument based on facts rooted in the truth.

The hue and cry of homosexual advocates is that God made them the way they are and that they cannot change. Therefore, we must accept them just the way they are. Many people believe these claims despite evidence to the contrary. People like Anthony Falzarano, director of Transformation Ex-Gay Christian Ministries in Washington, D.C., Bob Davies, director of Exodus International in San Rafael, California and Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., founder and clinical Director of the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic (TAPC) in Encino, California are working to expose the myth that homosexuals are beyond change.

According to Mr. Falzarano, the Transformation Ex-Gay Christian Ministries in its seven years of existence has helped 500 people abandon homosexuality. Mr. Davies of Exodus International Worldwide ministries estimates that his organization has been contacted by 150,000 men and women over the past 25 years with 600 attending their national conference that he describes as just the tip of the iceberg. In his book Reparative Theory of Male Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach, Joseph Nicolosi, clinical director of the TAPC, writes that a crucial distinction must be made between homosexuality “a name that is an undeniable part of their psychology,” and being gay, which he describes as a lifestyle and values. The goals of homosexual advocates is to legitimize this “gay” lifestyle choice.

Furthermore, as Dr. Nicolosi and other researchers have pointed out, all efforts by homosexual researchers to find a genetic link to sexual orientation are “extremely lacking in consistency and replication of findings.” What homosexual advocates deliberately overlook are factors, other than genetics, that explain homosexual development such as: the absence, both physical and/or emotional, of a father or a father figure, and sexual molestation. Mr. Falzarano of Transformation Ex-Gay Christian Ministries tells of the fact that eighty percent of the people he counsels were molested as children — which led some of them into homosexuality. It is most unfortunate that fatherlessness and sexual-molestation are factors never mentioned in discussions or news coverage on homosexual development.

Homosexual advocates often inquire why they would purposely choose a lifestyle that brings on such harsh treatment and condemnation? This question can be answered with two words — instant gratification. It is an ethos of “if it feels good do it” regardless of social warnings and consequences. As the efforts of Dr. Nicolosi, Mr. Falzarano and Mr. Davies reveal, homosexuals have the ability to change their lifestyles, but first they must have the desire to change.

by Dwight Williams, a member of the African-American leadership group Project 21, and Pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Stockon, California.

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