Description
MODERN SEXUALITY SERMON SERIES
THE TRUTH ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY
ED YOUNG
FEBRUARY 13, 1994
There’s a fascinating fact about men. They love to give other men nicknames. They’re really into the nickname scene, aren’t they? Think about the world of sports. These nicknames might bring images to your mind in a nanosecond. “The Playmaker.” “Dr. J.” “Moose.” “The Golden Bear.” “The Shark.” How about from the political spectrum? “Slick Willie.” “Ike.” “Abe.” “Ollie.” “Camelot.”
Nicknames are kind of terms of endearment. They’re a man’s clumsy way of showing another man, “You matter to me. You’re important to me.” More often than not, nicknames are terms of endearment.
However, some nicknames are terms of devastation. “Homo.” “Faggot.” “Queer.” “Queenie.” “Dyke.” When a man or a woman gives that name, that slang term, to another person, the person receiving slang terms like I just described to you is humiliated, devastated. They’re rocked to their core, because someone has told them, someone has referred to them as being a homosexual.
Just the mention of the word homosexual makes people nervous. They want to change the subject, because they don’t really know that much about it. You see, homosexuality is a very complex and mysterious condition. It’s a sad thing to say, but most of us know as much about homosexuality as the comedians who joke about homosexuals, or maybe a couple of slang terms. We might know a few off-color jokes, but that’s pretty much it. Most of us have limited knowledge concerning homosexuality.
I want to say a word to those in our midst who are heterosexual. Today, I want us to listen with a very open mind, to receive God’s truth, to learn about this matter. Let’s take all the presuppositions, and put them aside, and say, “God, you show me what you want to show me today, right here.” God’s brought us here for a reason, by divine appointment. He really has. He has a word to speak to my life and to every life here. Every time you walk through these doors, God wants to speak to you.
Let me say a word to those in our midst who are homosexual, because we have some who are struggling with this. I want you to know that you matter to God. You’re a much-loved person. But God says in His word time and time again that sex is for one man and one woman in marriage. The Bible goes on to say on seven different occasions that homosexuality is a sin. The Bible says it four times in the Old Testament and three times in the New Testament.
I have some friends who are homosexual, and I’ve talked to them. I’ve talked to many others in counseling situations, and they will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the gay lifestyle is anything but gay. Anything but gay. One author suggests that half of the suicides in the United States of America are committed by homosexuals. Two-thirds of the homosexual community has had, at one time, a sexually transmitted disease. What should our stance as a body of Christ be? How should I treat them? Over the next few moments that remain, I want to answer four frequently asked questions about homosexuality.
Question number one: what causes homosexuality? Question number two: what activities are homosexuals engaged in? Question number three: can homosexuals change? Is there hope for the homosexual? And question number four: what kind of attitude should I have, what kind of attitude should we have collectively as a church, towards the homosexual community?
Let’s start with question one. What causes homosexuality? There are three leading theories. The first theory is called the “Destructive Family Dynamic” theory. Let’s picture mom as a captain of a ship. She is bad to the bone. In fact, she is domineering, she is tough, she is legalistic. And dad? Well, dad is being towed in the wake of this giant vessel. He is content to ride on the dinghy and channel surf and watch ESPN while he’s eating Doritos. If a son is born into an environment like this, suddenly the mom has taken his masculinity and thrown it overboard. He wants masculine affection, and he looks, and he tries to find it. But there’s dad, way back in the back, and he can’t even communicate with dad over the roar of the diesel engines. “Hey, Dad! I want some male affection! Dad, Dad!”
If this goes on for a while, then this little guy, as he begins to develop, is vulnerable to a homosexual experience. 85% of homosexuals, in a recent study, say the reason they got involved in it was because they missed the affection from a father. They so wanted male affection that they would do anything to get it. That’s what oftentimes occurs. Plus, here’s this little guy, and he looks at women and he thinks that all women are the captain-type figure like his mom. He doesn’t want anything to do with the captain, so then he looks at a man. You add to that the addictive power of sex, and you see what can occur.
A second leading theory – and this leading theory is leading among the gay propaganda people – is the genetic or chemical theory. They say, “I was born that way, and I have to live this way, and don’t rain on my homosexual parade. I am what I am, and you are what you are, and I’m just going to do what I feel like doing.” The thing about this is that there’s no conclusive medical evidence whatsoever that supports this theory. Zero. None. One statistician who researched the gay lifestyle found that 82% of active homosexuals said they were homosexual because they were taken advantage of in an early childhood experience, and they had a very weak father figure. So the rest, 18%, feel like, “Well, I was kind of born this way.”
Let’s say the genetic theory was true, and let’s say that if someone was predisposed to this then they had a tendency to become a homosexual. That still does not explain deviant behavior. We still have a choice. What if I was predisposed to anger? Would that give me the freedom to murder about 25 people? “Well, you know, I was just born that way. It was just a genetic thing. I had no choice, and don’t get mad at me! I had to kill these 25 people. I really did.”
Here’s the third leading theory. An early homosexual experience. There’s a window of time in our development where we’re trying to find out what femininity is, what masculinity is, and all these things are happening to us. At that moment in time, if a trusted friend or family member steps in and takes advantage of us sexually, well, you can see where that would lead. Again, this person is trying to escape a dominant parent, this person sees this trusted individual, and you have homosexuality. You have many people going into the lifestyle because they were taken advantage of at a young age. I want to ask you, and just answer this in your minds, if you are involved in the homosexual lifestyle, where would your sexuality be at this moment if your path hadn’t have crossed the path of the person who took advantage of you at a very young age? Where would you be? Where would you be?
Researchers will pretty much say, “It’s a mystery. We’re not sure what causes homosexuality.” But most would say the third theory would be the leading cause of it.
Let’s move to the second question. What activities are homosexuals involved in? The gay propaganda people want to tell us that homosexuality is kind of like two men, holding hands, walking down the primrose path of life. It’s two women kissing now and then, and it’s no big deal. That’s what the media shows us, little 30- and 45-second pictures. Everything is fine, and they say, “We’re just like heterosexuals. We’re monogamous; we have a mutually satisfying, homosexual relationship.” That’s what they say.
But the Institute for Sex Research said that less than 10% of the homosexual community is relatively monogamous. In other words, the other 90% is promiscuous, and I mean promiscuous. An average homosexual will have between 20 and 106 different sexual partners a year. Over a lifetime they will average between 300 and 500 – and some, 1,000 nameless, faceless sexual experiences. These sexual encounters are going on right under our noses, in public restrooms, in parks, in bath-houses. They have an eight times greater chance, homosexuals do, of contracting syphilis. A 5,000 times greater chance of contracting the AIDS virus. They’re in great fear: fear of disease, fear of God. They want to talk about the genetic theory, because if they can somehow tie in genetics and chemicals with the homosexual lifestyle, “Hey, no problem! I don’t have to worry about the guilt, I don’t have to worry about that little feeling inside that says what I’m doing is wrong. It more or less explains my behavior away. I’m just an educated gorilla. That’s what I am, no problem.” All this stuff is given to us by man.
I’m going to show you something right now that is very graphic. If you have some children here, I’m going to warn you, you might want to take them out during this segment. Dr. Stanley Montief, a medical expert, a physician, has been studying the homosexual lifestyle for the last 20 years. He has a book out on the topic, and he’s going to show us what goes on in homosexual encounters. Listen as Dr. Stanley Montief talks.
Video: Homosexuals engage in fellatio, which is either insertive or receptive oral sex. About 93% engaged in rectal sex, which is anal intercourse. Of course, the rectum was not built for intercourse, so when you carry out anal intercourse, why, you manage to tear the rectal mucosa, you expand the sphincter in many instances. It’s not a healthy activity. It is because you tear the rectal mucosa that there is such a high incidence of disease in these cases.
Then about 92% of homosexuals engaged in something called rimming. Rimming is simply licking in and around your partner’s anus. It involved actually placing your tongue into the anus, and you couldn’t do this without some ingestion of feces. Then you had something called fisting, and fisting involved about 47% of homosexuals. It involved taking your fist and your arm and inserting it into a man’s rectum, so that he could have sexual pleasure, and you could have pleasure by inflicting this upon him. Then 29% engaged in something called golden showers. What are golden showers? A man lays on the ground naked, another man stands around him and urinates on him. Then there is something called scat, and about 17% of homosexuals engaged in that. That was actively eating human feces or rubbing human feces on your skin, or rolling around on the floor in feces, something called mud rolling.
Ed: Dr. Stanley Montief. Remember, 1%, less than 1%, of our society is homosexual. Yet the gay propaganda people are trying to tell us that this is an alternative lifestyle, that homosexuality, again, is two men or two women, holding hands, kissing now and then. That’s about the extent of it. Most of it is monogamous-type activity. That’s a lie.
It’s a lie, but you won’t hear that from the media. So much of the media is controlled by people who are amoral, and many are very active in the homosexual community. If you really want to know some more about what their agenda is, I encourage you to buy a book called “After the Fall,” written by two homosexual leaders, Kurt and Madson. They list twelve principles of what the homosexual agenda is and how it is being spread. I want to cite four of these twelve principles for you to show you how focused, how educated, and how aggressive this movement actually is.
The first principle. They say that homosexuality is an inborn, involuntary condition. There are no choices, there are no value judgments, no right and no wrong. Do whatever is good for you as long as you aren’t hurting anyone.
The second one. The sex lives of homosexuals and heterosexuals are similar and conventional. I ask you, the acts that Dr. Montief just described: would you call those conventional and normal? You be the judge.
The third principle. That homosexuals should have full rights to marry, have children, and establish themselves as families. Now, how would you like children growing up in families who are participating in those kinds of activities? They want to force on the private sector hiring quotas, and I’m talking about churches. If churches would not hire homosexuals, we would lose our tax-exempt status. They’re infiltrating the public schools. Textbooks like “Heather Has Two Mommies” and “Daddy’s Two Roommates,” showing little ones how to masturbate and other techniques I will not describe.
Here’s the fourth principles. Any resistance to the movement should be viewed like racism or anti-Semitism. “Oh-ho-ho! You social terrorist! Hey, man, don’t rain on my homosexual parade! This guy’s a bigot. This guy and this girl – ” On and on and on it goes.
I don’t want you to pick up at all that this church or this pastor is homophobic, or that I hate homosexuals, because the Bible says over and over again that people matter to God. Jesus was called a friend of sinners. A friend of sinners. When I die, I would love to have on my tombstone, “Ed Young, a friend of sinners, a friend of homosexuals, a friend of adulterers, a friend of mockers, a friend of liars.” Would you like that to be on your tombstone?
The third question: can homosexuals change? Can they change? Because, you see, if they were born that way, they couldn’t really change. When I talk to a homosexual, I like to give them the bad-news verse and then the good-news verse. Take your Bibles and turn to the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, I’ll begin reading with verse 9. I call verses 9 and 10 the bad-news verses, and verse 11 the good-news verse. Here’s the bad news. Here’s the apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian Christians. Here’s what Paul says: “Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.” In other words, if someone is involved in a continual pattern of homosexuality, they will spend a Christless eternity. They will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Some are thinking, “Ed, are you talking about losing your salvation?” No, I’m not. You can’t lose your salvation. I can say this, what the Bible says. Jesus said, “I will know you by your fruits.” When someone is saved, when someone has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you will see change, you will see fruit. There are a lot of people running around who are homosexuals, who call themselves Christians, who aren’t really Christians because there’s no change there.
Then I move to the good-news verse. The good-news verse is the last part of this section of scripture, verse 11. “And that is what some of you were.” Say the word “were” with me. Were. W-E-R-E. One more time: were. One more time: were. Were. I love that, were. Because we were a lot of things. Check this one: Paul is talking to a group of Corinthian Christians, and some were homosexuals. Some were adulterers. Some were male prostitutes. “But,” and I love the transitional phrases there in the Bible, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the spirit of God.” That’s good news, isn’t it? Can homosexuals change? No doubt about it.
A friend of mine I met about eight years ago was named Victor, and Victor was a leader in the homosexual community in Houston, Texas. Very affluent, articulate. A successful businessman. And Victor, for the first time, heard that he mattered to God, that he was a much-loved person. Even though he was in the homosexual lifestyle, he came to a point in his life where he said, “Okay, I’ve tried everything else. I’m not satisfied. Jesus Christ, I give my life to you.” At that moment, and it was a process, he was delivered from the homosexual lifestyle.
I saw someone who, I would say, was one of the best Christian men I’ve ever known. He would come to church and bring tens, twenties, thirty different people with him down the aisle, many coming to know Jesus Christ. A few years after he became a Christian, he found out he was HIV positive. I watched Victor die of AIDS, but completely delivered from the homosexual lifestyle. Can homosexuals change? Hey, there’s no doubt about it.
If you are a homosexual, let me share with you a couple of things. First, leaving the homosexual lifestyle will be the most difficult thing you’ve ever attempted. No doubt about that, no question. When you’re involved in sexual sin, especially deviant behavior like this, it has a grasp on the core of your being. Second, the only way you’re going to leave this lifestyle has to be with an uncompromising devotion to the person of Jesus Christ, relying on the Holy Spirit of God. If you don’t do that, then forget it. You won’t leave the lifestyle. Third: it’s going to take support and accountability. That’s what this body of Christ is all about in different ministries that we have in this fellowship. It’s time to come out of the shadows. We love you. The Bible says, time and time again, that you’re a much loved person, and God wants the best for you. He wants the best for me. We have to trust His sovereignty in regard to our sexuality. This week, if you’ll call our church office, don’t give us your name or address, we’ll give you support groups, ministries, different people to help you in this moment where you break the chains and become the kind of person God wants you and desires for you to be. You can become like my friend Victor.
Here’s the fourth question, and this is where it really gets tough. What should my attitude be toward those people who are homosexual? Should I avoid them? Should I run from them? I know Christians who say, “Hey, I’ll stand with you if you fall in adultery. I’ll stand with you if you cheat your business partner out of a lot of money. I’ll stand with you if you do this. I’ll stand with you if you have a violent temper. But homosexuality? Well, seeya later. Nope, not homosexuality. Everything else, I’ll stand with you.” I don’t know about you, but God has placed in my heart a love for people who are struggling with all strife. I don’t care what it is. I’m not that fussy. I don’t want this church to be that fussy. The confidence I have in this congregation is limitless.
We need to reach out and help these folks. Our church, collectively, and we, as persons, individually, need to do two things. Hear what I’m saying. We need to build bridges and draw lines. Did you hear that? We need to build bridges and draw lines. What do I mean by building bridges? I mean build bridges to that person struggling with homosexuality, bridges of love, of acceptance, of concern, of community.
But also, we have to draw lines in the sand. We have to say, “This is where I stand, alone on the word of God, and I’m not backing, I’m not moving. I love you, but homosexuality is a sin. It’s a sin. It’s rebellion against a holy God.” Now, when you draw lines in the sand, you will take insults. Especially the insults will be directed to me, because I’m the pastor of the church. But we love those who are involved in this. We don’t love their lifestyle; we don’t love their activities. But we love the person, and we will draw the lines.
When you are drug into this conflict, they’re going to call you every name in the book. It’s so easy to return the insult, to jump back if they jump at us, and say this and that and call them the slang terms and the queer jokes, and it goes back and forth. That’s a sin before God. The Bible says, in fact Jesus said, don’t return evil for evil. Speak the truth in love. That should be the stance of our church, that should be the stance in every one of our lives. Homosexuals, God loves you. Homosexuals, this church loves you. Homosexuals, listen to me: there is hope. I’ll say it again. There is hope. I’ll say it one more time. There is hope. If you want some evidence, one more time, look at the screen and see what the Lord has done.
Video: “One of the things we hear commonly is, “Well, if you change your homosexuality, then you must not have been gay to begin with. All I can say to that, from my personal experience, is that I know what I know from my own life. I know that I was gay.”
“God set me free thirteen years ago when I accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, so I know that the change is possible. I’ve worked in this kind of ministry, a ministry to homosexuals, for eight years, and time and again I’ve seen people transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.”
“I’ve been out of the gay life now for eight years.”
“God has healed me of my homosexual attractions.”
“I went into the homosexual lifestyle right out of high school when I was eighteen. I was in that for two years, and I was constantly trying to fill some kind of void that was there, so I became a female impersonator solely out of the need for attention and affirmation. I was worshipped by people in the lifestyle.”
“On July 19th, 1992, John Palk was married.”
Ed: Do you know what God wants, if you’re involved in the homosexual lifestyle? He wants, maybe one day, for you to be talking about what Jesus has done in your life, and how change can and will happen if you let it happen.