We Need Sexual Taboos

Advocates of homosexuality had assured the public that accepting homosexuality would not provide a slippery slope into wholesale sexual deviance. On the other side of the debate, it was argued that this rationale could be used to justify almost anything, and it has – pedophilia, polyamory, and sex-change surgery.

Unsurprisingly, the rationale for the homosexual agenda, as a hard-wired, unchangeable sexual orientation, has quickly expanded into “choice.” Anyone has the right to “love” whomever they want. Consequently, one motherexplains:

• “Vertasha and I knew we were attracted to each other when she was sixteen,” Mary Carter said. “But we decided to wait to have sex until she was eighteen, legally of age. We are now going public with our relationship to help others who might be in gay mother/daughter relationship feel confident and okay about coming out. We want the world to know we love each other as mother and daughter and romantically… we’re not hurting anyone. We’re a new minority and just want acceptance.”

Carter pleads that they “just want acceptance,” and why not? Who wants to be regarded as “haters” or “familio-phobic?” And don’t they have a right to enjoy sexual “love” wherever it might take us by surprise?

There are costs, significant ones. Homosexuals bear tremendous physical, spiritual, and psychological costs. The intra-family costs are even more ghastly. Can a daughter or a son sit on a parents lap without wondering whether or not they are being groomed as a sexual object? Can they wrestle, play, and remain affectionate with their parents (or even siblings) once the taboo is removed, and their school informs them that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with sexual relations with their parents?

The trust arising from our unconditional, “taboo-ridden” parent child relationships is the foundation of family and the minimal condition that children require for a stable and secure childhood. What will happen when the wife can no longer trust the husband to keep his hands off the children? Will not sexual jealousies tear apart the family!

Our progressive society blindly jumps into sexual experimentation because it yields pleasurable but very temporary benefits. It then becomes politically correct and beyond the pale of any serious discussion.

Sex-change surgery is now financed by tax dollars despite the lack of evidential support. In a “review of more than 100 studies,” the University of Birmingham found that “no robust scientific evidence that gender reassignment surgery is clinically effective.” (Salvo, Fall 2014, 33)

Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital reports on two studies which tracked children claiming to have transgender feelings.

• Among children who received no medical or surgical treatment, 70 to 80 percent spontaneously lost those feelings. (32)

Clearly, the scalpel should not be used to address mental disorders. However, the “right to choose” has become a conversation stopper. If parents want to sex their children, well isn’t it their right, even if they have to wait until their child becomes “legal?”

And why shouldn’t we take seriously the little girl who says she wants to marry “daddy?” We don’t, at least for now. But why shouldn’t we if that’s her orientation! Shouldn’t we honor it?

Vertasha is no less naïve and myopic:

• “My mom is still my mom. She does normal mom stuff: buys me clothes, pays for food, tells me to make our bed. We just happen to enjoy sex with each other too.”

Vertasha assumes that mom will always be mom. However, if other lesbian relationships are any indication of their future, the inevitable challenges presented by jealousy, bitterness, guilt, and the many other forms of disappointment will bred alienation, and mom will be history along with dad.

They want acceptance for their sexual experimentation, but should they receive anything other than censure? Should they be allowed to open a door to the inevitable demise of society? Acceptance would be the death-knell of an already imperiled but necessary institution of the family.

Resolving the Tension between our Freewill and God’s Sovereign Determinations

Here’s the conflict – although the Bible doesn’t mention the word “freewill,” it teaches as if this concept is beyond any dispute. So much of the Bible is about our responsibility to pray, obey, worship, and to study Scripture and the consequences we incur when we fail to fulfill these responsibilities.

However, there are many equally compelling verses that indicate that, through God’s unchanging plan, sovereignty, and oversight over His creation, He exercises even greater control over human events. He brings nations to the exact place He wants them to be to accomplish His purposes. He sets their national boundaries and times of flourishing. Here are just a few verses that we tend to overlook:

• “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.” (Acts 17:26)

• The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes. (Prov. 21:1)

• Lord, You will establish peace for us, for You have also done all our works in us. (Isaiah 26:12)

• John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.” (John 3:27)

• A man’s steps are of the Lord (Prov. 20:24); The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD. (Psalm 37:23)

• For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:10)

These verses don’t mean that God causes everything – He certainly isn’t the Author of sin – but it does mean that He ordains everything (Eph. 1:11), either by causing, guiding or allowing things to happen.

Here is one example of how we struggle to combine these concepts of our freewill responsibilities and God’s unchanging plan and providence over our lives.

• If God has really prepared for me the good works I am to do and has promised to direct my steps, I shouldn’t have to look around for a job. Instead, He will provide it. Nor would I even have to pray about this since He has even determined beforehand how my life will play out! (Psalm 139) 

Although we know that this reasoning is faulty - and that we must assume responsibility for our lives and our sins - it is hard to find fault with simply trusting God, if God is truly in control of our lives. But there is really a very “easy” resolution to the conflict between our responsibility (human freewill) and God’s all-embracing, providential and immutable plans. Accept them both! If we trust God, we will do as He says!

This is the Doctrine of Compatibility. It affirms that our freewill responsibilities are somehow compatible with God’s control of His creation. This is one of the truths about our infinite God – like the Trinity – that we finite beings cannot fully rationally understand. However, we believe in these truths because they are so deeply reflected in Scripture.

In fact, we already do believe in Compatibility! We believe that Scripture is fully the product of God – fully God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16). Yet we also acknowledge that, to some extent, it is also the word of man.

Paul claimed that his teachings were actually the Word of God:

• And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.(1 Thess. 2:13) 

Nevertheless, Paul’s writings reflect his own humanity, style, focus, experiences, emotions, and choices in many ways. He wrote about friends, enemies, and gave personal greetings. He chose to include certain personal references as freely as I choose to order a slice with pepperoni instead of mushrooms. (I cannot doubt my free choice without also doubting everything I think and understand. Such skepticism undermines all thought.)

However, I suspect that Paul, as he taught and wrote, always prayed that God would guide his choices, thereby acknowledging that he freely made choices as God directed him – Compatibility!

You will probably respond, “That just doesn’t make any sense. These two concepts cannot be compatible.” However, Scripture consistently regards human responsibility as compatible with God’s providential control. Paul put these two concepts together this way:

• Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Phil. 2:12-13)

While we have the responsibility to work out our salvation, this is because our Lord is at work within us to give us the right desires and thoughts, to convict us of sin and to illuminate Scripture. Therefore, even if we have labored mightily to understand His Word, He gets all the credit: 

• But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Cor. 15:10)

Paul even credited God with his hard labors and everything good that he had accomplished. Paul believed in Compatibility! After “many days” at sea on route to Rome in the midst of a great storm, the sailors lost hope of survival. Paul informed them of the revelation he had received from his God: “There will be no loss of life among you, only the ship” (Acts. 27:22).

Coming from God, this prophecy was written in stone, but:

• Paul [subsequently] said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these [sailors] men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 27:31)

This revelation seems to conflict with Paul’s first revelation that absolutely no life would be lost, period! However, God’s providential outcome and Word are somehow compatible with intermediate human choices to accomplish this outcome. Rather than cancelling out our will, our thinking, or our actions, our God is somehow able to work through these human means to accomplish His infallible purposes, as He had done through the writing of Scripture.

Admittedly, we cannot get our minds around Compatibility, but we mustn’t reject it for this reason. To reject it is to reject our very faith.

The Gay Agenda and the Deadening of the Mind and Choice

When I first read Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about everyone praising a king walking around in underwear, convinced that he was wearing the most exquisite clothing, I dismissed it as too unbelievable. I was certain that no normal person could ever be so persuaded. However, I now have to revise my judgment. It now seems that many of the leading “psychiatric and psychological” associations in the UK have been taken captive by a similar delusion. While they had never had been hesitant about treating the most intractable conditions – bi-polar, very psychoses, depression – they have now become persuaded that homosexuality is untreatable. Not only that, but anyone who attempts to treat it is committing an “ethical offense,” even when it is the homosexual client asking for treatment:

• While most medical ethics throughout the western world has adopted the primacy of patient autonomy as its guiding principle, the psychiatric and psychological professions in the UK are becoming increasingly authoritarian in matters of sexuality, according to one would-be therapist.

• Recently published professional guidelines in the UK say it is an “ethical offense” to either offer to help a client overcome homosexual temptations and feelings, or to accede to a request to do so from a client.

What is unethical about leaving the homosexual lifestyle – a lifestyle strongly associated with depression, suicide, mental illness, and a greatly abbreviate lifespan. Why shouldn’t a homosexual try to avoid such ills! And why is it now “unethical” for a therapist to assist?

I could better understand if an adulterous client approached the therapist with this request: “I feel guilty about this adulterous affair, and I want you to help me to overcome these unwanted feelings of guilt.” Adultery is a destructive moral evil. Such psychiatric help shouldn’t be offered! The same is true if the client is a Mafia hit-man and wants the psychiatrist to give him a drug to make killing easier.

However, fleeing the homosexual lifestyle is not morally wrong. Rather, it’s a rational choice and psychotherapy had been committed to rational choice! However, in the case of homosexuality, the choice to participate in this self-destructive lifestyle has become the only acceptable choice, as one courageous doctor has now affirmed:

• “I would agree that the focus is no longer on autonomy” in ethics in psychotherapy, said Dr. Michael Davidson, PhD, Director of the Core Issues Trust. In Britain’s main psychotherapeutic organisations, “the person-centred approach is not being respected,” he said.

• The psychotherapeutic community has created a climate in which therapists who do not toe the official “gay affirming” line, daring to assert that homosexuality is not, or does not have to be a fixed condition, face severe censure, even the loss of their professional credentials. Dr. Davidson said that the system overrules even the wishes of patients, telling them, in effect, that they must remain in the homosexual lifestyle, whether they want to or not.

Such flagrant dogmatism and authoritarianism, apart from the gentle persuasion of reason, usually does not characterize our professional societies. Such a transition reflects the fact that they have been politically co-opted to spout the party line.

Davidson has a vested interest in this matter. He was a homosexual who had exited from this lifestyle and is convinced that others have also broken free through counseling and other means:

• Dr. Davidson’s troubles started with an interview on BBC radio in which he “expressed the idea that therapeutic support should be made available to those who want to move away from homosexuality.” The result was that his membership and trainee status were revoked by the British Psychodrama Organisation. His future remains in question.

In Andersen’s story, the King became convinced through friendly persuasion. When reason doesn’t prove adequate, those promoting the homosexual agenda use force, coercion and intimidation. They also do great damage by encouraging youth to embrace homosexuality, even though they realize that sexual feelings can be very fluid during the early years, and initial sexual encounters are formative. Davidson therefore warns:

• “I think we are doing damage when we make these categories something that are so fixed. So if a nine year old boy has homosexual thoughts we have to tell him to take on a gay identity. It’s an appalling abuse of freedom.”

Children have become mere pawns in this game of promoting the militant homosexual agenda. The fact that these promoters are encouraging them into a lifestyle of greatly heightened suicide and grossly abbreviated lifespan is never discussed. As with the tailors who sold the King his clothing, they seem to care about nothing else apart from the “sale.”

However, even more culpable than the money-hungry tailors, were the King’s advisors, appointed to protect the King against such threats. The media, the universities, and the profession societies are even more culpable than the gays. While the gays are caught in the grips of the powerful psychological forces of guilt, shame, self-contempt and anger, the professions know better, and they have been appointed to guard against these “appalling abuses of freedom.” However, they have become willing accomplices!

This is reminiscent of the observations of Albert Einstein regarding the advent of National Socialism in his homeland of Germany. As this horrible transition into darkness was occurring, he had looked to the media to expose them. However, he was shocked when they all capitulated. He then looked to the great German universities, which certainly would not tolerate Hitler and his gang. However, they too fell willingly into line. He then looked to the Church, an institution that he had long despised, but the only institution that offered any resistance against the violent hoard. Perhaps this resistance had been too little and too late, but within the great sea of capitulation, the Church had been the only light.

Someone needs to scream, “The King has no clothing on,” but silence reigns in our corridors of education and government.

Freedom and Prostitution

Prostitution is now widely regarded as victimless and therefore, should be legalized. After all, shouldn’t we be free to fulfill ourselves in this manner! However, not everyone is of this opinion. Tania Fiolleau had once been a prostitute. She had also been an “overseer” of brothels who once employed hundreds of women.” Now, Fiolleau and other former prostitutes are denouncing the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision to legalize brothels. Why? On her website, Fiolleau argues:

• First, the impact of migrant trafficking is an estimated 120 to 400 million dollars a year and accounts for roughly 8000 to 16,000 people arriving in Canada a year illegally. Vancouver B.C is also a major port for human trafficking. This goes a lot deeper than your typical prostitute on the street corner soliciting drivers. About twelve 15 to 30 year-old Asian girls are trafficked into Canada each week on visitors or work permits and then sold into prostitution. These women are working in brothels, and many of these are unlicensed establishment disguised as therapeutic massage centers, nail pedicure places, etc.  These women do not want to become prostitutes; they did not grow up with dreams of one day becoming a sex slave or being pimped.  Many of these are ‘tricked’ into coming on work visas and then forced into prostitution.

• Second, the demands for young prostitutes is very high as customers prefer the services of adolescents for their own sick reason and they are also ‘perceived’ to be more clean and less likely to harbor sexually transmissible diseases. Many teens are recruited into prostitution by friends who are already part of the trade and youths who have left broken or abusive homes. They are, in turn, susceptible to offers of shelter and emotional support and are often tricked into prostitution. The average age of entry into prostitution in Canada is 13 to 14 years old. Most of them are recruited or coerced into prostitution and many are leaving abused homes.

• Approximately 80% of women in prostitution have been victims of rape. Prostitutes are raped on average of eight to ten times per year; they are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet.  In a study, several prostitutes showed many of the same characteristics as soldiers returning from war. 76% of prostitutes met criteria for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). That number is higher than soldiers and Prisoners of war.

• Legalizing prostitution becomes an incentive for women to enter the trade if we keep it legal…Once they enter the trade the statistics show that less than 3% of prostitutes can exit. They get addicted to the money, they get addicted to drugs, they lack education and they can’t get out.

• Statistics show that two-thirds of the children born from prostitutes end up prostitutes as well or in jail.

• The diseases that are spread are vast.

• In a 1998 report of prostitutes across five countries, 92% of women said they wanted to escape prostitution immediately and they would if they had resources.  Women who sell themselves are often coerced, forced or drugged into it—sometimes even at gun point.

Later, Fiolleau told LifeSiteNews that prostitution is a physical and psychological destroyer of women. “As the years go on they develop drug habits. Every single time that you sleep with a John, it chips away at your soul. Eventually you are the walking dead and then you try to take your life. I see it over and over and over again.”

Prostitution is no less a victimless crime than outright murder. However, it’s far more seductive. It is ironic that the feminist movement claims to have taken huge steps to liberate and elevate women. While employment and educational doors have swung open, she has also been reduced to a sexual object to be gawked at, grabbed, undressed, used, discarded, and often murdered. She has been told that what she does best, where she derives her greatest joy – child rearing – is beneath her dignity. Instead, she has been “dignified” by a stressful career from which she must return home to her children who still need diapers changed.

What promises liberation and sexual freedom can enslave. The things that we want can kill, and this is not just true of drugs. Peter described this irony regarding false teachers and their alluring false teachings:

·        For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity--for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. (2 Peter 2:18-19)

Indeed, our choices can “master” us. All of this raises the question: “What kind of society do we want?”  However, it raises an ever more fundamental question: “What is freedom?” Is freedom a matter of indulging all of our passions whenever we want them fulfilled? Is freedom a matter of imbibing heroin or pornography if this is what pleasures us? Won’t our pursuits and addictions deprive us of freedom? Heroin certainly is a freedom killer. Many argue the same thing about pornography – that it kills normal relationships, addicting us to images and fantasies, undermining our commitment to families.

“Choice” is now equated with “freedom” – whether regarding prostitution or porn – but should it be? Perhaps, instead, it’s more like what Jesus taught:

·        Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?  (Matthew 16:24-26)

Perhaps, then, freedom is a matter of restraining our passion. For Jesus, freedom is also a matter of knowing and embracing the truth:

·        To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32)