Today is the 8th of June, now recognised internationally as the month celebrating pride. It was pride that caused the fall of Lucifer, the brightest of God’s angels and the fall of man, the best of his creations. In both cases the motive was the same: I want to be like God, remaking the world according to my wishes and not merely knowing good and evil but deciding for myself which is which. The result is always and everywhere disastrous.
Officially, of course, Pride month is about a celebration of the so-called rainbow community, but I would argue that it is really a celebration of the sin of pride. As I hinted in ‘Judge not – or not’ the key is to judge the sin, not the sinner.
The issue of homosexuality and how the bible views it is an angel I continue to wrestle with. There are many references in the bible. In the book of Leviticus 20:13
If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Also in Deuteronomy 22, 5
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear woman’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.
That sounds pretty clear, doesn’t it? Many of course will argue that Christ never condemned these things, but this is, I believe a misunderstanding. The New Testament is not ‘The Bible, second edition’, it is ‘The Bible, volume 2’. Christ was a devout Jew and said himself that he had not come to erase one jot or tittle from the law. If Christ is silent on a point of Torah law, the law stands.
So where does that leave us? I’ll step away from the Bible a moment and bring my scientific mind to bear.
Debra Soh lays it out best in her book The End of Gender. There are two, and only two sexes: Male and Female (as described in Genesis 1, 27: God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them). There are two, and only two sexual orientations: male loving and female loving (my expressions). Some people have sex outside of their main preference, either because they are more sexually adventurous than others, or because nothing better is available (as in prisons, boarding schools, convents, the military and so on) but they still have a primary sexual preference. Even people claiming to be bisexual have a primary preference and tend to keep to it. Jordan Peterson has suggested that most women today claiming to be bisexual have had no female sexual partners. I don’t know which study he is referring to, but I believe him.
Nonetheless, there is a proportion of the population (somewhere between 3 and 5%) who are either male and male loving or female and female loving. Is this by choice or by nature? Debra Soh points out that, despite what some activists claim, sexual orientation is not fluid but fixed and immutable. She has the weight of science behind her. Despite the horrors done to gay men in the name of ‘conversion therapy’ there is no evidence of any lasting change in their orientation. By contrast, the activists cannot point to a single case of a person’s sexual orientation being permanently changed. From John Money’s appalling experiment with the Reimer twins to the current horrors of so called ‘gender affirming care’ and the rise of so called ‘detransitioners’ it is clear that any such attempts are doomed to failure.
So, what to make of this? God is just, why would he set down a law and then make people unable to uphold it? It is true that we all have a tendency to sin, and we all become better and stronger by resisting the temptation, but I don’t think expecting a gay man to abstain from sex is anything like telling an alcoholic to abstain from drink. The drive for sex is far stronger than the urge to drink, gamble, lash out when angry or commit any other sin.
I will be very interested to hear what Dennis Prager has to say when he writes his commentary on Leviticus, but he often points out that under Jewish law, a person could only be condemned to death on the evidence of two witnesses. To impose the death penalty was often more a statement about the seriousness of a crime than an intent to actually execute anyone. For example, although a mother and father of an unruly son could, in theory bring him to the elders and have him executed, there was no record of this ever happening. Is there any record of men being put to death for homosexual sex in biblical times? I don’t know. The only references I can find in the bible to getting rid of sodomites or their houses refer not to ordinary gay men but to male shrine prostitutes.
I believe that the attitude was that if two men lived quietly together in a stable and loving relationship without being obvious or outrageous about it, then society turned a blind eye. In my opinion that is how it should be. If you have never read Oscar Wilde’s heartbreaking The Ballad of Reading Gaol, I strongly suggest that you do. Oscar Wilde was a brilliant author, a devout catholic and a gay man at a time when being gay was illegal. The book was written when, or shortly after he was imprisoned. It is ostensibly not about him, but about a man condemned to death for murdering the woman he loved, but you can hear his personal torment in every word. Oscar Wilde writes of the condemned man’s redemption prior to execution and clearly wished for a similar redemption of his own. I believe Oscar Wilde genuinely wanted to become straight, but he couldn’t, because he was born gay and would remain gay until his death. As we now know, he could no more will himself to become straight than he could will himself to become a dog.
What Dennis Prager said in his excellent commentary on Deuteronomy is that the prohibition against women wearing men’s clothing or men wearing women’s clothing is that it intentionally blurs the distinction between male and female. He points out that whenever we blur these distinctions, chaos results. He also says that those people who genuinely believe they were born in the wrong body should be treated with kindness and compassion rather than condemnation. This is supported by Dr Soh. She points out that there is such a thing as gender dysphoria, although it is extremely rare and mainly affects males who typically become aware of their condition as little boys. The current rates of so-called rapid onset gender dysphoria, especially among young women, are many orders of magnitude higher than can be explained by anything other than social contagion. Dennis Prager also believes that a man who genuinely believes himself to be a woman, takes a woman’s name, dresses as a woman, and lives as a woman does not violate the Old Testament (Torah) law. He covers this in more detail, and I strongly suggest that you buy or at least read his Rational Bible series.
Of course, the key is whether or not the man genuinely believes he is a woman. Many who claim to identify as women do not truly believe that they are women. An especially reprehensible example of men figuratively and literally dressing up as women is the current trend of ‘identifying as women’ to gain access to women’s spaces such as dressing rooms, showers, bathrooms, refuges and women’s prisons, often without undergoing any form of surgery. According to Dr Soh, this is something a genuinely gender dysphoric male would never do, he would be too embarrassed of his male genitalia. If such a man ever did enter a women’s changing room, he would keep to a corner with his back to others in the room and desperately avoiding eye contact. He would not be loud and proud, nor would he be insensitive to how uncomfortable women might be in having to share their intimate space with a biologically intact male.
When the gays ‘came out’ and demanded they be accepted as part of society, it was probably well past time. Certainly, it was long past time to end horrors such as happened to Oscar Wilde. But the Gay Pride movement made a serious mistake. They did not distance themselves from the paedophiles (I’m told that gay men are no more likely to be attracted to children than are heterosexual men). Nor did they distinguish themselves from the autogynephiles, men who derive sexual pleasure by imagining themselves having sex as women. These are the men who insist on access to women’s intimate spaces. As my sainted primary school teacher used to say, “There are always some who ruin it for everybody.” It will be unfortunate if the genuinely gender dysphoric males are banned from gyms, swimming pools and other female spaces because of the actions of these selfish predators, but women must be protected.
Now in an age where a boy or girl can be surgically altered to a grotesque parody of the other sex, trans activists are pushing for this so-called ‘gender affirming care’ to be made available to all. The people who suffer most from this, are young people on the autism spectrum, depressed young people, and young people who might otherwise have grown up to be perfectly happy and healthy gays and lesbians. Pride comes before a fall, and sadly Gay Pride was no exception.
It's not the so-called Rainbow Community that I object to, but their pride. It’s the pride that says, “I can remake myself in whatever way I want, and you will accept my views without question or suffer my wrath”. It is the pride of doctors who believe they can take the place of God and remake men and women in their image. It is the pride of teachers who believe they can do the same — in fact that they have a sacred duty to do so despite what the parents think.
Remember what Jesus said about those who cause the little ones to stumble? As far as I know, it’s the only time he advocated the death penalty.
It seems we have reached an age where your faith is something you must do quietly in the privacy of your own home or church and be sure to shower afterwards, but your sexuality must be shouted from the rooftops.
Pride is not just a sin; it is the sin of Lucifer himself. It should never be celebrated.
I will continue the theme of pride and why it is considered the deadliest of sins next week.
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