Last week, France became the 14th country in the world to legalize gay marriage, which was just three months after the country’s President Francois Hollande proposed the legislation to parliament.
Hundreds of thousands of protestors marched the streets in early January and again after the ratification. Despite the public’s strong opposition, the French government remains undeterred, leaving many questioning its country’s leaders and political system.
In early January, the Hong Kong government announced its plan to review the "anti-discrimination law," which many believed would create "reverse discrimination" and around 50,000 protesters gathered in front of government building.
In early April, Uruguay’s Congress has voted to legalize same-sex marriage, making it the second country in Latin America and the third, with Canada and Argentina as the other two, in all the Americas to do so. It is allowed in Mexico City and some parts of Brazil, as well as nine states of the US.
On April 17th, New Zealand became the 13th nation in the world and the first in the Asia-Pacific region to allow gay couples to marry.
In late Feb., President Obama issued an amicus brief to U.S. Supreme Court justices, urging them not to defend Proposition 8 – a California ban on same-sex marriage – and DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), which defined marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
In late-March, the justices engaged in oral argument about the constitutionality of Prop. 8 and DMA and will disclose their conclusions in June.
Dr. Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, shared his experience in the battle against gay marriage in the United States with the church in Hong Kong last year.
His principle is to present the truth with facts and touch people’s heart with love. As of now, around a thousand lawyers have joined Pacific Justice Institute to provide free legal services to those facing challenges for standing up for their faith.
In an interview with The Gospel Herald, Dacus explained the essence of the homosexual movement, how to save the slipping moral values, and the new concept of caring for homosexuals.
GH: Reporter Sharon Chan
GH: Actually in the Christian point of view, we are defending the way that God created this world and how marriage is supposed to be. For the public, who mostly don’t know about God, they will think that it is only a problem of different moral values. Do you think that it is difficult to explain about morality in the legal perspective?
Dacus: Sure. More arguments. Well, in a humanistic society are often not the most compelling, they have a legitimacy that has a broad and wide history. In fact, even with referencing scriptures, our founding fathers in creating our nations referenced to laws of nature and nature’s God, that’s fundamental of our nation to legitimately to break away from England or the intolerant British Empire. And in fact, our founding fathers referenced human beings as endowed by our creator with certain rights, and those rights were the premise for the construction of the bill of rights and our constitution itself - the highest law of the land of United States of America.
Moral foundation, moral premise and the existence of moral premise presuming to the natural law was very ... to how America has come to be and uniquely functioning under the concept of the bill of rights which has … the American society and liberty.
Also, historically, we see that society, in order to function and maintain stability, safety and security, its members must have a consensus of what is right and wrong, particularly that individual actions are not independent of themselves but impacting others, particularly children, as we have seen, they are so much of the target to homosexual rights movement in the United States and in other places.
Any society that elevates homosexuality as being entitled to marriage only opens up the foundation to greater indoctrination to public schools to be accepting and giving in to such lifestyles. The opposition of homosexual activist tempted to say the lie that everyone’s born that way, psychologically and medically, that’s a huge falsity.
The fact is social factors such as the absence of father and proper bonding and acceptance of father is much more correlated with the likelihood of homosexuality than any genetic personality traits that the child may have, or even genetic physical built that the child may have.
And in fact, personality traits or temperament, do not determine sexual orientation. But the society from a non-biblical perspective allows it to be a factor in determining gender identity, which can be a problem.
Then once again, we go back to the importance of the church and Christianity. Children who learn manhood not by the world’s definition or the western definition, which is John Wayne or football player, but rather defining manhood based upon the scriptures of the Bible such as David or others, that’s much more important today, in addressing the personality aspect of it. These are the points I want to make, that’s: homosexuality is not a civil rights issue.
And here is why, under the laws of most countries and developed world, homosexuals are free to engage in all kinds of behavior and lifestyles. In fact, not only homosexuals but also polygamists and many others who are seen to be deviant sexual lifestyles, have abundance of freedom to exercise their lifestyles. So they have the freedom, it’s not to engage and interact and communicate, so it’s not the issue here of civil rights. Instead, the issue is about government sponsorship and encouragement of these deviant behaviors and lifestyles. And in the United States, what we traditionally ask the government to do is to promote the general welfare. So the question is about how’s the perspective. Once again, it’s not about civil rights, but the government is affirming homosexuality and even promoting the lifestyles and relationship of social homosexuality, and that does not promote the general welfare of the society.
If you look purely from a public policy perspective in the context of general welfare, the answer is no. It does not promote general welfare. If you look at the decrease in lifespan, in the matter of suicide and mental health issues such as depression and relationship difficulties, it is likelihood of cancer and other diseases, both terminal and non-terminal, there is very little room for creditable argument for government to support homosexual lifestyle to promote the general welfare of the society, particularly for our children, in the United states and around the world.
The basic fundamentals of humanity and basic compassion and love for children and young adults should compel Christians and non-Christians alike, to have compassion and love to speak out constructively in terms of not only politics and public policy but individually as well.
The continued survival and pro-creation of human race … If everyone is homosexual, how can we continue the human race?
GH: In the United States, gay lobbyist received a lot of funding from colleges and major corporations. As a result, they can successfully change the cultures and social concepts, which results in the change in people’s perspective towards morality. In the past, people think morality should be protected, but now we just want to escape from morals.
The question I want to ask, just like what you said in the very beginning… at first we only needed to be tolerant of homosexuality, but now we have to embrace them… even embracing this kind of lifestyles, otherwise, we may be sued or incriminated. How can we turn back this loss in moral grounds, telling people the importance of morality? What do you think is the key point?
Dacsu: How do we make moral more acceptable to others?
I think that’s a reactive to religious doctrine, but rather as a part of human rights and compassion. With that you have both testimonials of people sharing the truth about their paths down that road, but also statistically and analytically of what this lifestyle does in terms of people’s health and life span. I think if there is a campaign for making these humanitarian arguments, it should be totally separated from citing any scriptures. I think the moral arguments can gain much more weights for consideration. There are strong compelling humanitarian arguments of human compassion and that could be achieved through testimonials and through educating the public to practically to see the harm and danger and destruction that homosexuality posed for society. That’s how you make more arguments. Not using a scriptural but using societal compassion.
And mind you, churches shouldn’t be left out of this message, churches can actually be one of the access points for counseling for those who are struggling or in that lifestyle, as well as ministry to those who are suffering from that lifestyle, to AIDS or terminal diseases from that lifestyle. In addition to AIDS, those engaged in that lifestyle have much more higher chance of having anal cancer and esophagus cancer and other medical consequences.
GH: In summary, we need a double-edged sword – truth and love.
Dacus: Yes, so we need to have it.
We need to be clear, creditable and concise with the truth and the reality and the impact of this lifestyle to the society. We also have to be forefront of love and compassion. It cannot be anyway allowed the truth be seen as a message of rejection. It’s totally the opposite message of compassion. More arguments can be delivered. Either it’s a sign of rejection and even hatred … or compassion and love.
Even today, many Christians who read scriptures will make mistakes with their own lives, they use scriptural constraints to say that rejection by God is a reflection of God’s love and compassion, not from a tolerant supervisor or loving heavenly father who cares for us. That’s off the topic. God gives us constraints and boundaries just as our father on earth gives us constraints and boundaries.
Christians in churches need to have humility in addressing homosexuality and those who struggles with homosexuality. It’s actually the grace of God that soaks in every one of us. There is no sin that has taken from us for such it is common to man … sometimes Christians in their own desire, of their own self-holiness or self-righteousness, failed to acknowledge the vulnerability that every human or every Christian has to virtually every sin that exists. No one is immunized. And that is important for us to come to have proper humility in interacting with people who are struggling with homosexuality, not in the context of those who are in anyway less than us, but rather as fellow sinners, who are just like us that needs the grace and mercy and transformational power of God to each of us. There is only two groups of people, those who are lost and those of us who are used to be lost. That’s the love message that’s more easily received and effectively conveyed.
