by Standerinfamilycourt
Laurie Higgins, Cultural Affairs Writer for the Illinois Family Institute, wrote in a blog on January 25:
“Prager University (PragerU) was started in 2009 by Dennis Prager as a way to circumvent the left-leaning educational universe and bring conservative ideas to the public in general but especially to young people. This week, PragerU released a deeply disappointing video featuring Guy Benson, political editor for Townhall Magazine and frequent contributor on Fox News Channel.
“Guy Benson is immensely gifted. He is a bright, thoughtful, articulate young man with a quick mind and a gracious, winsome manner. He is also telegenic, which makes him a perfect spokesperson in a culture mediated by visual media. But those very gifts and his appeal to young people will enable him to have a corrosive affect on some conservative values.
“Book-ending his five-minute PragerU video, Benson says, ‘I’m a Christian; a patriotic American, and a free market, shrink-the-government conservative who also happens to be gay.’
“The phrase ‘happens to be gay’ is an attempt to diminish the significance of his choice to affirm homosexuality as central to his identity. Please note, I did not say Benson chooses to experience same-sex attraction. Rather, he has freely chosen to place his unchosen homoerotic feelings at the center of his identity, and that is not something that just ‘happens.’ Nor is it something trivial.
“Benson goes on to say that ‘Far too often people are sorted by their gender, or their skin color, or their sexual orientation, or any other immutable characteristic that has nothing to do with ideas or values.‘
SIFC: After picking one’s self up off the floor at the startling realization that THE Dennis Prager had actually allowed this young man to (insupportably) claim on one of Prager U’s videos that homosexuality was an immutable characteristic, “standerinfamilycourt” participated in a dialogue on Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon’s page, where it was brought to light by one of the commenters that Mr. Prager, himself a conservative, unregenerated Jew, has a lesbian niece. We find many who have close relatives who are homosexuals seem have considerable trouble not departing from biblical, and sometimes common-sense, views on the topic.
(Note: according to Wikipedia, Dennis Prager is a serial polygamist with 3 wives, to-date. Hence, his life shows that the only part of God’s Matt. 19:4-6 definition of marriage he endorses would be the complementarian element, if that.)
Mrs. Higgins continues….
“This short sentence [bolded above] contains a number of troubling propositions.
“Like ‘progressives,’ Benson suggests that ‘gender’—and by ‘gender,’
I assume he means biological sex—and skin color are analogous to ‘sexual orientation.’ First, ‘sexual orientation’ is a Leftist rhetorical construction intended to communicate the false idea that heterosexuality and homosexuality are flipsides of the sexuality coin and morally equivalent. In contrast, others argue that homosexuality represents a disordering of the sexual impulse.
“Second, homosexuality per se has no points of correspondence to sex or skin color. Biological sex and skin color are genetically determined and carry no behavioral implications, thereby rendering moral disapproval of them irrational.
“In contrast, homosexuality is constituted by subjective feelings, whose cause or causes are unknown, and volitional activity for which moral assessment is both rational and legitimate—no matter what the cause or causes for the feelings.
“Third, what does Benson mean when he refers to homosexuality as an “immutable characteristic”? Is he referring to the powerful, persistent, and seemingly intractable nature of his desires? If so, in his view is it morally acceptable to act on all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings? If he doesn’t believe the powerful, persistent nature of feelings confers automatic moral legitimacy on actions impelled by such feelings, how does he determine which ought not be acted on?
“And how does he respond to the brilliant Rosaria Butterfield, a former feminist English professor and lesbian who has written eloquently about her spiritual conversion and rejection of a lesbian identity?”
SIFC: Amen, Laurie Higgins! Homosexuality is a chosen behavior, every bit as much as heterosexuals choosing to ignore the crystal-clear word of God against coveting and retaining the God-joined, man-separated spouse of another living person is a chosen behavior. But it’s true that if you dare speak out about either immorality, the latter being by far more pervasive, you have, in effect, been deemed to have “attacked” that person. Both can be, and in fact, must be forsaken to gain or recover any inheritance in the kingdom of God. Forty years ago, the claim started to be that marriages Jesus repeatedly called adulterous { Matt. 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b ] were morally equivalent to the holy matrimony of our youth, if the proper paperwork was obtained from the civil state.
(Both Laurie Higgins and Rosaria Butterfield are in God-joined, original covenant marriages, but we daresay many friends, relatives and donors are not in original covenant marriages. It’s really no different than with Prager’s lesbian niece when it comes to adopting a mindset that is contrary to plain scripture instruction.)
Continuing….
“Fourth and most intellectually dishonest, Benson makes the remarkable claim that the affirmation of a homosexual identity ‘ has nothing to do with ideas or values.’ Does Benson really believe that his (or anyone else’s) homosexual attraction has anything to do with his ideas about and support for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages?
“And does he really believe that his homosexual attraction has nothing to do with his hermeneutics (i.e., methods of biblical interpretation)? Benson claims he is a Christian and that his Christian identity sits at the tiptop of his list of personal identifiers. For him to identify as a homosexuality-affirming Christian, Benson must have first embraced a very late 20th Century revisionist hermeneutic that rejects the plain reading of Scripture and 2,000 years of church history, and which emerged not from newly discovered documents but from the mid-20th Century sexual revolution.”
As usual, Laurie Higgins has the cultural idiocy nailed, when it comes to homosexual immorality and its effect on our culture. That said, she is characteristically myopic when, in her ten years as the Cultural Writer for a major state’s very effective Christian family policy organization, she still fails to note where all of this is actually coming from. In this last paragraph above, she has surely crossed over into the myopic plane of vision. Faulty hermeneutics and the Sexual Revolution had everything in the world to do with why 40% to 60% of our fellow pew-sitters (heterosexuals) are adulterously “married” to another living person’s God-joined spouse. Mr. Benson could very well be a child of that national abomination. From here, Laurie Higgins also joins the January 22 conversation that occurred on Dr. Gagnon’s Facebook wall:
“Arguably the preeminent theologian writing on the Bible and homosexuality, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, writes this in response to Benson’s PragerU video:
“Marriage is the single most significant structure in society. Radically redefining it at its very foundation so as to make gender differentiation irrelevant is a decisively non-conservative political stance, not to mention an unfaithful anti-Christian position that tacitly rejects the God of Abraham and Moses as well as the lordship of Jesus Christ. There can be no negotiation on this point without upending the rug on which the conservative table is set. It takes more courage to hold the line here than on any other position. Conservatives should be known for courage, not cowardice; clarity, not confusion….”
SIFC: Everything stated above by Dr. G about homosexual practice can equally be said of the practice of “marrying” a divorced person. For that matter, all that Laurie Higgins states immediately above (our bolding) can be said for the behavior of the evangelical community in embracing remarriage adultery over the past 50 years. The professor recognizes the widespread adoption of consecutive polygamy inside and outside the church, and has debated the likes of Dr. David Instone-Brewer on the topic. He is not a myopic man, but a clear-sighted one who struggles for a way to avert the mass-exit repentance of people from admittedly-adulterous unions. In this, he rationalizes that only the prohibition of homosexuality (but not marital indissolubility) is “foundational” to God’s design for sexual ethics. He further argues that there is adultery, and there is a “lesser class” of adultery for remarriage while estranged from a God-joined spouse. He is unable to support this with scripture, and sometimes says he “could be wrong.” We would say to our friend, Dr. Gagnon that it takes twenty times the courage to hold the line on the indissolubility of holy matrimony than it does to hold the line on the immorality of homosexuality. We would agree with him that disciples of Jesus Christ should be known more for courage than cowardice, and known more for clarity than confusion. Were it only so!
Laurie Higgins concludes:
“The talented Guy Benson and others like him pose a threat to conservatism and Christianity. Widespread cultural approval of the homosexuality-affirming ideology threatens the foundation of any society. And if the church affirms heresy, we put at risk the eternal lives of people like Guy Benson.
“Since Dennis Prager is committed to the free exchange of ideas, perhaps he’ll invite someone to appear on another video to debate the ideas expressed by Guy Benson, whose embrace of a “gay” identity suggests that homosexuality—not Christianity—sits at the tiptop of his identity list.”
…. To which we respond that Guy Benson is not a disease but merely a symptom of a much more widespread disease that has already undermined both conservatism and Christianity, and formed an ideology of its own some 500 years ago, adopted in this country about 50 years ago. Indeed, the fact that economic conservatism has proven increasingly elusive in the U.S. over these past 50 years can be accounted for by the studies on the high transferred social costs of institutionalized adultery, amounting to at least $112 billion dollars a year when last measured in 2008. There is no such thing as economic or fiscal conservatism without social and moral conservatism, and President Trump’s recent tax cuts are more likely to swell the deficit than “lift all boats”, if history is any indication. One cannot “shrink the government” while indulging a morality, heterosexual or homosexual, that is offensive to God and toxic to families, as the bible defines families.
How well we already know what happens when the church affirms heresy — we have put at risk the eternals lives of millions, not just people like Guy Benson. We submit that heterosexual autonomy – not Christianity – sits at the tiptop of most evangelicals’ identity lists, and that’s why we have the droning thunder of pastoral knees knocking these past few decades, as false converts call the shots at their churches.
“Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation‘ — giving no cause for offense [against God] in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited, but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love, in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left…” – 2 Corinthians 6:3-7
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
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