SERMON: “Our Current Cultural Downgrade” (Rom. 1:18–32)

“Our Current Cultural Downgrade”
(Romans 1:18–32)

Series:               “LGBTQ+ Issues”                       Text:                 Romans 1:18–32

By:                    Shaun Marksbury                         Date:                June 2, 2024

Venue:              Living Water Baptist Church            Occasion:             AM Service

 

I.              Introduction

How should we think about the word “love”?  For some, this isn’t even a thought — it’s simply a warm feeling people have for someone else.  Yet, if we ponder that question for more than ten seconds, we might consider that the word can have several different meanings.  We’ve heard the euphemism, “make love,” and that very different from the kind of love a parent has for a child, or the comradery men experience when they’ve faced battle together.  In fact, the Greeks had six separate words for love, four of which are found in Scripture.  So, love is more complex the more we think about it.

We’re entering into June, and we know what that means — we are going to see displays of pride, as people wave flags and declare, “Love is love!”  We wonder how we’re to consider this question as Christians, for the God we worship is love.  Does that mean that we should advocate any kind of love?  Perhaps you even know someone who identifies as transsexual, transgender, homosexual, or the like, and you rightly see someone made in God’s image who deserves love.  However, few seriously advocate the talking points of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, because some “love” seems out-of-bounds.  So, how do Christians draw the line?

It’s popular for some to say Jesus doesn’t say anything about homosexuality.  However, Jesus calls people to an exalted view of both the Law and the Prophets (i.e., the Old Testament) in His Sermon on the Mount (cf. Matt. 5:19).  He also calls us back to a biblical definition of marriage by pointing back to Adam and Eve (cf. Mark 10:1–12).  He affirms a belief in the whole of Scripture when addressing the questions of life.

In this series of sermons, we’re going to consider what the God says of the kinds of love literally paraded around during pride month.  Today, we’re considering how society has been degrading the concepts of sex and marriage in their definitions of love, ultimately seeing that our current cultural moment has God’s judgment upon it.  Let’s start by backing up from what society tells us and reconsider Scripture.

II.           The Definition of Sex and Marriage

God Himself created us in His image — male and female (Gen. 1:27).  He also instituted marriage, which means He defines it.  Perhaps you’ve heard that the “gender binary” is wrong or that marriage is an oppressive institution, but these pre-fall creations were blessed by God for His purposes and for our good.

In fact, God calls us to live in light of His creation.  In a journal article, Dr. Irv Busenitz points out five commands God calls us to in His creative work — “reproduction, the union of one woman and one man, woman functioning as a complement to man, picturing the relationship between Christ and His church, and a fulfilling of distinctive roles by husband and by wife.”^[1]  We’re going to note key scriptures later in this series, but it’s important to start by highlighting that both sex and marriage come from God for a reason.

This is why the family unit, not the individual, has been historically seen as the smallest building block of society.  Yes, the individual has rights and is created in God’s image, but healthy families are essential for a healthy society.  As Douglas Farrow wrote,

The third-century Roman jurist, Modestinus, captured the common understanding of marriage with the following definition: “Marriage is the union of a man and a woman, a consortium for the whole of life involving the communication of divine and human rights.” This union and these rights exist, not merely for their own sake, but also and especially for the sake of the inter-generational concerns of progeny and property; with a view, that is, to the conditions necessary for the founding and flourishing of the family. The rights involved are divine as well as human because marriage is generative, and hence pre- as well as pro-political; because what is founded through marriage is, in the twentieth-century language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “the natural and fundamental group unit of society.”

The same elements that found expression in Modestinus perdured and prospered in the Augustinian understanding of marriage as an institution entailing, not one, but three interwoven goods: proles, fides, et sacramentum—procreation or fruitfulness, loyalty or faithfulness, and bonding or sacred union. That societies shaped by this understanding took the unusual step of making marriage monogamous testifies to the seriousness with which each of these goods was regarded, precisely in its service to the others. It was by developing them in their mutuality, moreover, that heterosexual monogamy (to use the language of its detractors) created the conditions for the new and deeper respect for women and for children that until recently has characterized the West.[2]

What we’ve seen in the past fifty or so years, though, is a movement away from family toward the individual as the most important part of society.  Re-definitions of family abound based on the needs of the individuals, definitions that no longer involve the natural family.  As such, one can only expect the degradation of society as well as the women and children who were afforded protections by a Christocentric view of marriage. 

For instance, children are deprived bonds found in the natural family and of instruction by both a father and mother.  This isn’t an argument against adoption in general, of course, but same-sex unions must always rely on adoptions, surrogacy, or scientifically innovative methods to introduce a child into a “family” which could never produce it on its own, intentionally depriving children a normal family unit.  One child who grew up in a lesbian household shares the following thoughts of growing up in such an environment:

My peers learned all the unwritten rules of decorum and body language in their homes; they understood what was appropriate to say in certain settings and what wasn’t; they learned both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine social mechanisms.

Even if my peers’ parents were divorced, and many of them were, they still grew up seeing male and female social models.  They learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive from female figures.  These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays.

I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers.  As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others.  Thus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily.  Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home.  Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home.

My home life was not traditional nor conventional.  I suffered because of it, in ways that are difficult for sociologists to index.  Both nervous and yet blunt, I would later seem strange even in the eyes of gay and bisexual adults who had little patience for someone like me.  I was just as odd to them as I was to straight people. …

[B]eing strange is hard; it takes a mental toll, makes it harder to find friends, interferes with professional growth, and sometimes leads one down a sodden path to self-medication in the form of alcoholism, drugs, gambling, antisocial behavior, and irresponsible sex.  The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them — I know, because I have been there. [3]

That’s one of many like stories, and that one isn’t about abuse.  Some gay couples have adopted kids to abuse them.[4]  At most, we must conclude that this isn’t optimal, and it can have tragic results.

Marriage and family isn’t the only source of degradation — our culture is also changing definitions of what it means to be male and female.  Women have lost their Title IX protections[5] as men who identify as women dominate in sports and other arenas.  There are women incarcerated alongside of male rapists who identify as “female.”

Why is this degradation occurring?  Let’s consider what Scripture has to say about that now.

III.        The Cultural Degradation of These Categories

Romans 1:18–32 describes a cultural downgrade.  It does so by showing us God’s judgment on unbelievers (v. 18), but that doesn’t only come in spectacular displays of fire-and-brimstone.  God’s wrath comes upon a society as He removes His protective hand and turns it over to wickedness and depravity.  Today, we’ll consider this in light of our society’s embrace of the LGBTQ+ spectrum of lifestyles.

Our society once understood that we had a Creator.  Of course, not everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence was a Christian or held to Christian values, but they all believed the concept that we’re endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.  They affirmed that rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were not granted by the State but by God (for when the State grants rights, it can take rights away from us).  The framers of the Constitution fully intended people to be both religious and well-educated in Law and history.  As our founding father and second President John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[6]  They rejected the concept of a secular society such as was modeled in the French revolution (what many Americans would eventually adopt).

People know the truth about God because it’s “evident within them” and “clearly seen,” “they are without excuse” (vv. 19–20).  The language here indicates that a personal choice is made to become embrace lies, so they become “futile in their speculations” and darkened in heart (v. 21).  “Professing to be wise, they became fools” and idolized the creation rather than the Creator (vv. 22–23).  Because of this, they worship their lusts.

Speculations can come from intelligent people writing papers for institutions of higher learning.  If we fast forward to the opening decades of the twentieth century, we know that there was a movement away from creationism and a protestant ethic.  As science advanced forward, our ideas about the need for the Bible changed.  John Dewey began to change our schools, moving them toward a more naturalistic worldview with the promotion of Darwinism.  At the same time, our society grew increasingly materialistic.  

The result of this idolatry is that God turns people over “in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them” (vv. 24–25).  A downgrading culture has a sexual revolution, such as ours back in the 1960’s.  With it came radical feminism, abortion-on-demand in 1973 achieved sex without consequences, and eventually, no-fault divorce.  

What about when people continue in sin?  “God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (vv. 26–27).  So, there’s also a homosexual revolution.

Secular academia began proclaiming the concepts of a new dogma known as queer theory.  Like with all critical theories, its aim is to correct apparent disparities in power dynamics, interpreting all data through the lens of oppression.  In this case, it seeks the abolition of the supposedly oppressive family structure (males oppressing females, adults oppressing children) as well as the removal of heterosexual norms or “heteronormativity” (where a largely heterosexual society oppresses sexual outliers).  It also seeks to tear down other norms, including that of the so-called sexual binary, opening the way to other gender identities.  New age practitioners and occultists have also long touted the desire for social androgyny, where society loses distinctively male or female characteristics, and this aligned with the neo-Marxist ideas of Foucault and others.  Everything we’re seeing accepted today has been preached in universities by activist professors for generations.

While many of the goals of gender theory remained in ivory towers, certain changes were on the horizon.  Activists were able to move the American Psychological Association away from defining homosexuality as a mental illness.  They also convinced the Centers for Disease Control to rename the autoimmune syndrome GRID (“Gay-Related Immune Deficiency”) or “Gay Compromise Syndrome”[7] to “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome” (AIDS).[8]  Such kinds of steps removed potential sources of social stigma to homosexuality.  Popular culture, embracing more sex and drugs in its entertainment, was signaling that it would be willing to change its mind on these issues.

The main cultural putsch came in the 1990’s.  The number of households led by married couples plummeted below 25%,[9] and that fostered an environment conducive to redefining the family for future generations.  School teachers began defining a family as a “unit of two or more persons, related either by birth or by choice, who may or may not live together, who try to meet each other’s needs and share common goals and interests.”[10]  Television programs and commercials began featuring homosexuals to normalize them.  Groups began advocating for the recognition of same-sex civil unions, and more.

Some conservative groups, seeing where this was going, pushed back.  They were successful in passing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996.  Then-President Bill Clinton caved to pressure to sign it into law, and it wouldn’t be until Barack Obama’s second term in office that a sitting US president would vocalize support for same-sex marriages.

However, the tide was turning.  Along with this decline came the call for hate-crime and anti-bullying initiatives that specifically addressed the concerns of the homosexual lobby.  In 1997, even though President Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law, he called on schools to “to teach [children] a different way.”[11]  Then came the false narrative the media began pushing about a high-profile murder: a young man, Matthew Shepherd, was murdered because he was homosexual (the truth was that it was a drug deal that went wrong).[12]  The die was cast; public schools would begin teaching LGBT+ history and flying rainbow flags.

Of course, on the surface, it was about equal rights.  In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the union to legalize same-sex marriage.  Eventually, in 2015, the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling stated that all states must recognize same-sex marriages under the Fourteenth Amendment.  The 2022 Respect for Marriage Act replaced DOMA with recognition of same-sex marriages as the federal law.

Understand that the redefinition of marriage was always a steppingstone to the larger goal.  In 1994, homosexual writer Michaelangelo Signorile writes, “A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution.”^[13]  In 2004, a lesbian author wrote, “We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society’s view of family.”[14]  In other words, the goal hasn’t been equal rights for marriage, but the destruction of marriage.

That’s because the large majority of those in the homosexual community don’t desire monogamous relationships.  Consider the extreme promiscuity among homosexuals: Some “83% of the homosexual men surveyed estimated they had had sex with 50 or more partners in their lifetime, 43% estimated they had sex with 500 or more partners; 28% with 1,000 or more partners.”[15]  Of these encounters, 79% are strangers.[16]  Among homosexual males, only 4.5% reported sexual fidelity to its partners.[17]  The extremely high rates of fornication, which often involves tearing and bleeding, is the reason why certain diseases like AIDS and Monkeypox can uniquely grip the homosexual community.  According to the CDC, “In 2014, gay and bisexual men made up an estimated 2% of the U.S. population, but accounted for 70% of new HIV infections;”^[18] in 2015, those “aged 13 to 24 accounted for 92% of new HIV diagnoses among all men in their age group.”^[19]  Lesbian and bisexual women are also at greater risk of both breast and lung cancer;^[20] they are at “increased risk of adverse sexual, reproductive, and general health outcomes compared with women who reported sex exclusively with men.”^[21]  This says nothing of physical trauma and mutilation associated with the LGBT lifestyles.  The physical results of that sin — whether it be tearing, rectal distension, sexually-transmitted diseases, infertility — becomes the “due penalty of their error.”

Of course, we’ve only touched on the current shifting definition of sex.  This biological term defines what is male and female, but cultural revolutionaries have successfully co-opted a grammatical term, gender, and use it to supersede biology.  In the past twenty years, thousands of gender “clinics” have appeared throughout the United States.  Policy makers have passed legislation in some places to criminalize “misgendering” a person (e.g., continuing to call Bruce Jenner a man), and judges may even revoke parental rights for those who don’t want their own children transitioned.  Government documents are removing gendered language like “mother” and “father” from birth certificates.  Public schools teach that there are more than two genders and that children should experiment with dressing up to discover their gender.  Children’s television programing teach the importance of learning a person’s preferred pronouns and accepting gender-bending practices.

It's obvious that we’re created for a purpose, male and female.  Yet, there are people who know such things can bring them under the judgment of God, but they embrace sin and applaud those who practice them (v. 32).  The cultural downgrade is both celebrated, and it will be increasingly forced upon us.

IV.        Conclusion

This is a difficult message, but I don’t want you to leave here discouraged.  Yes, we are under the judgment of God.  However, God has turned back from His judgment in the past.  We can recognize this moment and use it as motivation to get to work.  We can attend school board meetings to ensure that certain filth and promotions are not in our schools.  We can calmly push back against companies promoting the degradation, for they only do it because they think it will make them a profit.  We can vote differently in elections and write politicians, letting them know that we do not want these new values promoted.  Most importantly, we can pray that God will change the minds of those around us.

I also don’t want you to be discouraged about those who you know are caught in this life.  We’ve been looking at cultural movements today, not necessarily individuals.  There are lies sold in the media, on social platforms, or in the public schools, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is aware of all these realities.  They need to hear the truth in love, so don’t treat every individual in this lifestyle as though they are activists and cultural revolutionaries who are tearing down society.  Rather, with patience, kindly explain the ways of God, which certainly go beyond the question of whether someone identifies as LGBTQ+.

And, dear one, if you have experienced same-sex attraction or discomfort in your body, I don’t want you to feel discouraged.  It doesn’t mean you’re irredeemably turned over by God.  As we’ll note in 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, there are those who even engaged in homosexual behavior who repented and became contributing members of the Christian church.  God can not only save you in Jesus Christ, and He can even wash away the “vile affections” or “degrading passions.” Like with any sin, it is only in the power of the Holy Spirit that we can experience true freedom, but His power is available to all who hope in Jesus Christ.

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[1] Irv Busenitz, “Marriage and Homosexuality: Toward a Biblical Understanding,” TMSJ 19/2 (Fall 2008), 203.

[2] Douglas Farrow, “Why Fight Same-Sex Marriage? Is There Really That Much at Stake?” Touchstone Magazine, Jan./Feb. 2012, https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=25-01-024-f&readcode=2898&readtherest=true#therest.

[3] Robert Oscar Lopez, “Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View,” Public Discourse, August 6, 2012, https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/08/6065/.  Lopez eventually repented of his homosexuality and, though having identified as bisexual, is living a heterosexual lifestyle as a Christian. He served as a Professor of Humanities at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

[4] For instance, in Australia, “Adopted Boy Sexually Abused By Gay Fathers,” https://news.sky.com/story/adopted-boy-sexually-abused-by-gay-fathers-10441302, and “Georgia couple accused of producing child sex abuse images using adoptive children” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/georgia-couple-facing-charges-allegedly-producing-child-porn-using-ado-rcna41917.

[5] Cf. Kendall Tietz, “Women under Biden administration’s Title IX changes face the ‘evisceration of legal womanhood,’ experts say,” Fox News, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/women-under-biden-administration-s-title-ix-changes-face-the-evisceration-of-legal-womanhood-experts-say/ar-BB1nb4SI

[6] This quote was part of a letter he wrote to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts on October 11, 1798 (per https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/john-adams-religion-constitution).

[7] Cf. Oswald, G. A., et. al., “Attempted immune stimulation in the ‘gay compromise syndrome,’ ” Br Med J (Clin Res Ed). 285 (6348): 1082, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1500058.

[8] Coined in Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia among persons with hemophilia A,” MMWR Morb. Mortal. Wkly, Rep. 31, July 1982 (27): 365–67, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001126.htm.

[9] Eric Schmitt, “For the First Time, Nuclear Families Drop Below 25 Percent of Households,” New York Times, May 15, 2001.

[10] Alan Sears and Craig Osten, The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2003) 52.

[11] Paul Bedard, “Clinton Urges School Diversity Training,” Washington Times (Nov 11, 1997):A1, quoted in “Family News From Dr. James Dobson,” Newsletter (June 1998):3.

[12] Billy Binion, “Matthew Shepard's Murder Was Almost Certainly Not an Anti-Gay Hate Crime,” Reason, Oct. 12, 2023, https://reason.com/2023/10/12/matthew-shepards-murder-was-almost-certainly-not-an-anti-gay-hate-crime/ .

[13] Michelangelo Signorile, “Bridal Wave,” OUT Magazine (December/January 1994):161

[14] Paula Ettelbrick, “Since When is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” in Same-Sex Marriage: The Moral and Legal Debate, eds. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2004), 261.

[15] Citing a study from Alan P. Bell and Martin S. Weinberg, “Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women,” (New York, Simon and Shuster, 1978), 308, found at https://exodusglobalalliance.org/ishomosexualityhealthyp60.php.

[16] Ibid., 308–309.

[17] All of these references were compiled by Matt Slick, “Statistics on sexual promiscuity among homosexuals,” CARM, Sep 13, 2011, https://carm.org/homosexuality/statistics-on-sexual-promiscuity-among-homosexuals/.

[18] “HIV Among Gay and Bisexual Men,” https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/index.html, accessed March 8, 2018.

[19] Ibid.

[20] “Cancer Facts for Lesbians and Bisexual Women,” https://www.cancer.org/healthy/find-cancer-early/womens-health/cancer-facts-for-lesbians-and-bisexual-women.html, accessed March 8, 2018.

[21] Catherine H. Mercer, et al., “Women Who Report Having Sex With Women: British National Probability Data on Prevalence, Sexual Behaviors, and Health Outcomes,” American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), June 2007, http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2006.086439, accessed March 8, 2018.