The audio from today’s interview on Knowing the Truth radio program is available here.
I would like to thank Pastor Kevin Boling for hosting me today and leading us in a Bible-centered discussion of this issue. As Kevin mentioned, the church is being attacked by those who seek to normalize homosexuality, not only in our culture but also in the church. As Matthew Vines has stated, his organization “seeks to reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity.” The only way to combat this in the church is to go back to the Scriptures.
I pray that this interview will be beneficial to you and will glorify God by taking the focus off our own happiness and back to the truth of God’s Word.
You can find out more about Knowing the Truth radio program and Kevin Boling at www.knowingthetruth.org.
CNN has reported that the British Parliament has taken initial steps to make same-sex marriage legal in the United Kingdom. In spite of strong resistance by Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party, the measure received an initial vote of approval 400-175. According to the report, the measure must still receive another vote in the House of Commons and a vote in the House of Lords.
While the Conservative Party in the UK has opposed the legislation, Prime Minister Cameron has been supportive of the measure. He has considered it to be an issue of equality while still claiming to support marriage.
This should prove interesting since the Church of England officially opposes the legislation, yet it is the state church. CNN notes:
As drafted, the bill would enable religious organizations to choose to conduct same-sex marriages if they wish and includes provisions intended to make sure no religious organization or person is forced to do so.
The Church of England is among the religious bodies opposed to the legislation.
The Church of England also sent a brief to Parliament citing its objection. The news report states:
The Church of England also outlined its objections to the bill in a briefing note sent to lawmakers Friday.
It cannot support the legislation “because of its concern for the uncertain and unforeseen consequences for wider society and the common good when marriage is redefined in gender-neutral terms,” it said.
While the reported objection is probably not the full reasoning, the Church of England brings up a good point. When marriage becomes gender-neutral, it is automatically separated from procreation. Marriage is then defined in terms of emotion. Once intensity of emotional bond becomes the definition of marriage, other forms of marriage must be approved. These include polygamy, polyamory, and ultimately incestuous marriage.
This will be a big defeat for supporters of traditional marriage. It will also prove to be a source of tension for the Church of England as it attempts to serve as the state church while opposing the law. My guess is that the Church of England (in England) will ultimately be forced to comply if this law is enacted.
We will be well-served to see what happens in the UK because it may be the future in the United States.
Photograph of President Truman in the Oval Office receiving a report on the accomplishments of the Boy Scouts from a delegation of Eagle Scouts, who are giving him the Boy Scout salute. (National Archives and Records Administration)
The Boy Scouts of America are scheduled to make a decision this week on their membership policy. This could prove to be a significant shift in policy that has the potential to impact the future of scouting.
Last week, Deron Smith, director of public relations for Boy Scouts of America, announced that “the BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation.” Prior to this announcement the Boy Scouts have maintained a policy that prohibits membership for homosexual scouts and troop leaders. As recently as July 2012, the Boy Scouts had affirmed their membership policy as “absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts.”
In place of their national policy prohibiting the membership of homosexuals, the BSA may implement a localized policy where “the chartered organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with each organization’s mission, principles, or religious beliefs. BSA members and parents would be able to choose a local unit that best meets the needs of their families.” In essence, each local organization that sponsors a Boy Scout troop would have the ability to set its own policy regarding sexual orientation.
The merits (or demerits) of this potential policy shift have been discussed in the media and will continue to be the subject of evaluation in the days to come. However, I want to ask the question: Does this potential policy change by the Boy Scouts represent the face of the “New America”?
What is the New America? The proposed policy of the Boy Scouts gives us a guide for what the New America looks like.
First, in the New America convictional beliefs are discarded for the sake of avoiding cultural pressure. There is no doubt that the Boy Scouts have faced extreme pressure from the homosexual community to change their policy. Even after a decision from the Supreme Court in 2000 that allowed the Boy Scouts to maintain their membership policy, the pressure has grown. At this point, however, at least some of the pressure has been building from the executive board where two prominent members have expressed publicly that they would work towards ending the policy.
Unfortunately, discarding convictional beliefs for the sake of avoiding cultural pressure is a hopeless cause. For the Boy Scouts, many of their sponsoring organizations (churches, schools, and civic groups) will now face pressure to include homosexual scouts and leaders in direct opposition to their own beliefs. Unlike the national organization with the time, resources, and money to fight the challenges, these local groups will either capitulate to the pressure or drop their sponsorship. Effectively, the national organization will suffer because they are unwilling to stand up in the face of pressure.
Second, in the New America decision-makers refuse to take responsibility for those under their authority. President Harry S. Truman famously had a sign on his desk in the White House which read, “The buck stops here!” Implied in that phrase were the ideas that tough decisions were made here and the blame for those decisions could not be passed along to someone else. It appears that the Boy Scouts have chosen to pass the buck with their new proposed policy. Rather than taking responsibility for the hard decision (either keeping the policy in place or directing the sponsoring organizations to abide by a new policy), the national organization has passed responsibility down the line. This is not the natural line of progression for responsibility. Responsibility increases as one moves up the chain of command. There is no doubt that a scoutmaster would take responsibility for his troop rather than allowing the scouts to do what is right in their own eyes.
This failure to take responsibility is nothing new to the human race. When asked by God if he had eaten fruit from the tree about which God had commanded him not to eat, Adam replied, “The woman who You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). Adam failed to take responsibility and blamed Eve, yet he still suffered the consequences of his sin. In the same way, the national BSA may feel that they can dodge the consequences of making a decision by placing the burden upon the local organizations; however, their day will come, either through a plethora of lawsuits or an exodus of sponsoring organizations.
Finally, in the New America disagreement equals hatred and bigotry. On controversial issues, such as homosexuality, disagreement is often equated with intolerance and labeled as hate speech, bigotry, or a danger to society. For example, Richard Ferraro, vice president for communications for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), granted an interview to the New York Times. In part his statement read, “Prohibiting or ejecting gay children or leaders sends a dangerous message to all children, Mr. Ferraro said, adding, ‘It’s policies like this that contribute to bullying in schools.’” The appeal here is not to logic and reason (or even the legal right that BSA has to exclude certain people). Instead, Ferraro has equated the membership policy to bullying. His analogy is replete with fear, danger, and hatred.
The days of civil public discourse appear to be fleeting. Respectful disagreement is no longer tolerated. The Boy Scouts had previously staked their claim on this issue in a respectful, yet clear, manner. However, that policy has fallen out of fashion in American culture. In the face of accusations of being bullies, bigoted, and out-of-touch, the BSA is on the verge of yielding to the loudest voices in our culture. They do not seem to be up to the task of making their case in a reasoned, balanced argument.
We will find out later this week what the Boy Scouts decide. It seems evident that the policy will be changed. Time will tell if the Boy Scouts of America will survive this monumental shift.
One thing is certain, however. We should not be surprised when we encounter the mindset of the New America. We were warned in the Bible. In 2 Timothy 3:1–5, Paul writes:
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power.
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Deron Smith, “Media Statement,” Boy Scouts of America, January 28, 2013.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. That case and its lesser known counterpart, Doe v. Bolton, opened the door for abortion on demand in the United States. Roe v. Wade deduced a right to privacy from the 14th Amendment that extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Doe v. Bolton defined the health of the mother, the cause by which a woman could legally seek an abortion, to include physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and age issues. Thus, almost any reason could be legally permissible for seeking an abortion. Since January 22, 1973, over 55 million abortions have been performed in the United States.
Part of the abortion debate revolves around the idea of when an embryo/fetus/newborn attains the right to life. Various options have been considered, including conception, viability, birth, and self-awareness. The most common answers for pro-choice proponents have been either viability or birth. The most common response for pro-life proponents has been conception.
In light of this tragic anniversary, I want to go to an unusual source for thoughts on the question of when a new human life attains the right to life. Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His views on life, abortion, infanticide, and animal rights have shocked Americans for decades. However, Singer offers a stinging critique of traditional pro-choice arguments and an interesting aid to pro-life proponents.
Singer writes:
The central argument against abortion, put as a formal argument, would go something like this:
First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human being.
Conclusion: Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.
The usual liberal response is to deny the second premise of this argument. So it is on whether the fetus is a human being that the issue is joined, and the dispute about abortion is often taken to be a dispute about when a human life begins.
On this issue the conservative position is difficult to shake. The conservative points to the continuum between the fertilized egg and the child, and challenges the liberal to point to any stage in this gradual process that marks a morally significant dividing line. Unless there is such a line, the conservative says, we must either upgrade the status of the earliest embryo to that of the child, or downgrade the status of the child to that of the embryo; but no one wants to allow children to be dispatched on the request of their parents, and so the only tenable position is to grant the fetus the protection we now grant the child.
After considering various options for a morally significant dividing line, Singer concludes:
The liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any event or stage of development that can bear the weight of separating those with a right to life from those who lack such a right, in a way that clearly shows fetuses to be in the latter category at the stage of development when most abortions take place. The conservative is on solid ground in insisting that the development from the embryo to the infant is a gradual process.
Unfortunately for those of us who agree with Singer on this particular point, he goes on to make the case that infanticide should be legal. He holds to the position that a child does not have the right to life until he has reached a stage of adequate self-awareness. He contemplates that such an adequate stage may not be reached until the age of two or three years old. However, for the sake of the overwhelming negative reaction he might get, he is willing to legalize infanticide up to about one month after birth. In my opinion, the outrageous conclusions of his own argument actually help to strengthen the pro-life argument even further because it becomes the only plausible position.
Despite the fact that Singer’s ultimate conclusion is just as horrendous as legalized abortion, his critique of the classic pro-choice argument is very helpful. As this debate continues in the public square, it might be useful for pro-lifers to take note of Singer’s critiques and employ them where appropriate.
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Peter Singer, “Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus,” (from Practical Ethics) in Writings on an Ethical Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 146-64.
Should abortion providers be protected by a conscience clause ensuring they are not “marginalized” for providing abortions? This idea has been proposed by Dr. Lisa Harris of the University of Michigan. Richard Doerflinger responds to this question in a recent article on the Public Discourse. Here are some of the highlights:
[L]et us concede that most other conscience laws, at the state and federal level, speak only of a conscience right not to assist or perform abortions (and sometimes other procedures such as sterilization). Why haven’t Dr. Harris’s allies in Congress also fought over the last four decades to make these laws double-edged?
The most obvious answer is that they have seen no need to do so, because, as our highest court proclaimed in 1973, those who want to perform abortions already have the freedom to act as they wish. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, reaffirmed in cases such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), has barred government at any level from prohibiting (or as Casey says, imposing an “undue burden” on) a woman’s decision to have an abortion, or a doctor’s decision to perform that abortion, at any time up to fetal viability. Even after viability, the doctor must be free to decide that an abortion is needed for the woman’s “health” (defined to include all factors—including physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to her “well-being”), and act accordingly.
Conscience laws have been needed since 1973 precisely because this new “right” of abortion seemed so absolute, so sweeping, that its proponents insisted it should be enforced as a kind of entitlement: When a woman wants an abortion, doctors and hospitals that disagree must abandon their own consciences and serve her wish. Congress and the vast majority of states responded to this claim, in the years following Roe, to affirm that the law’s protection of the woman’s decision does not deprive everyone else of their rights.
Some believe that a doctor’s refusal to perform an abortion forces a woman to act against her will. Doerflinger responds:
By contrast, if government or my employer makes me agree to do something my conscience tells me is gravely wrong, I must directly violate that negative norm—for example, the norm against killing the innocent. I have sacrificed my moral integrity. I have made myself, in my own moral judgment, into a person who kills. It is absurd to say to a pro-life physician: “No problem. You can still refuse to do an abortion next week, or at your medical practice down the road.” Further, if a doctor stands by his or her conscientious refusal, that infringes no one else’s conscience: It simply takes this doctor out of the picture, and forces no one else to do anything at all.
Someone might say: Yes it does. It forces the woman to seek her abortion elsewhere. But that is simply false. The doctor is not making her seek an abortion at all, and may be perfectly willing to offer assistance that in the doctor’s judgment is much better than abortion for the health of her and her child.
Finally, Doerflinger states that the government’s interest is not in maximizing abortions but in protecting life (even though that may not seem to be the case on the surface). He states:
No national governmental body—whether legislative or judicial—has said that government has an interest in maximizing abortions. Nor does public opinion support such a claim, as most Americans (male and female) generally describe themselves as “pro-life,” and few people say there should be more abortions than there already are.
On this point the Supreme Court’s own stance is widely misunderstood. Since 1973 the Court has ruled that government generally may not prohibit abortion. But it also has consistently acknowledged government’s legitimate secular interest in “encouraging childbirth over abortion.” And it has said this interest justifies bans on public funding of abortion, and a variety of regulations and restrictions that fall short of a ban on abortion.
In upholding a ban on federal abortion funding, the Court explained the government’s interest this way: “Abortion is inherently different from other medical procedures, because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life” (Harris v. McRae, 1980). This cryptic reference to the unborn as having a “potential life,” a term with no clear meaning, has given way in later cases to a straightforward recognition that by regulating abortion “the State . . . may express profound respect for the life of the unborn” (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992) (emphasis added).
In its most recent abortion decision, Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the court upheld a federal ban on partial-birth abortion, a law that it said “expresses respect for the dignity of human life.” Here the justices reaffirmed government’s “legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.”
In short, our laws—and even the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence—do not treat performing an abortion as something that is just as good or “conscientious” as delivering a live baby instead. Government has an interest in promoting the latter and discouraging the former. Lawmakers have no constitutional mandate, and the public has no desire, to treat them as morally equivalent.
The entire article is worth your time, especially as we approach the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision on January 22.
The audio from today’s interview on Knowing the Truth radio program is available here.
Ethics as Worship 