I have read many stories over the past few weeks of people reaching out to people, particularly amid the rubble that is now Haiti, and I applaud every effort, even the one mentioned in Wendi C. Thomas' column "Center Has Soft Spot for Kids in Hard Times," in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, which championed a safe place for young people dealing with same gender attraction. However, I must respond to the underlying "born-that-way" implication that someone dealing with same-gender attraction has only one recourse, which is to submit and embrace homosexuality.
We seem to be living in the grim fairy tale world in which the emperor is parading around naked, yet we all feel compelled to exclaim over his dazzling new clothes. In this world, to hint that homosexuality is not a sentence but a challenge, is to be denounced a heretic. One who so proclaims is forthwith accused of "gay bashing" and is relegated to the lowest possible rung of societal opinion.
Notwithstanding, I feel compelled to say unequivocally: there is a way out of homosexuality, just as there is a way out of alcoholism, or of sexual addiction of any kind, or of any addiction, whether genetically imposed or environmentally disposed or consciously chosen. There is always a way out; I have seen it happen. One must ask: Did Christ come for nothing?!
Had we not embraced such a casual attitude toward right and wrong that families began to fall apart, that marriage became optional and "shacking up" preferable, that sexual relations among teenagers became normal and expected, then we would not have arrived at the place where we find ourselves today, where homosexuality too has become normal and natural, and where further moral erosion threatens the innocent in ways we dare not (as yet) imagine.
We have, as Isaiah describes it, "turned things upside down" (Isaiah 29:16), as societies before us have done; and, while we fiddle our own tune, like Nero, modern Rome - I mean our Western world - burns. For while the emperor was "born that way", his nakedness exposes him to dire repercussions, unless he finds a way to be clothed.
I say this, not because I hate, but because I care.
