December 2004

ARTICLE TOOLS

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I feel cheated. Cheated by those who say that they love me and are trying to help me. Yet, if things were left up to them, I would still be in a prison of my own making—enslaved by homosexuality and without hope.

Like many other Christians, I have struggled for years with same-sex attraction. By God's grace I know freedom from a way of life that still holds too many others captive. Yet many within the so-called affirming church would deny us that freedom. They say homosexuality is God's plan for our lives, even though the Bible clearly says that homosexual behavior is a sin. It is not my intention to prove it; many conservative theologians have already done so. Instead, let me highlight, on a practical level, the negative effects of affirming this sin.

Does God gain some mysterious personal benefit by prohibiting homosexual practice? My exposure to homosexuality convinces me of a far more basic rationale for the biblical prohibition: Homosexuality is bad for me.

First, there is the all-too-common problem of sexually transmitted diseases. As I pondered the recent deaths from aids of

a member of my extended family and his domestic partner, I couldn't help an involuntary shudder over the obvious implications. When I entered college, I had already decided that I would withhold no homosexual pleasure from myself. God, in his great mercy, acted before I could carry out my plan. Had Jesus not changed my life one fall Sunday in 1971, I would have likely become another STD statistic by now.

But the area where the affirming church cheats people the most is not health. It is relationships. You don't hear the affirming church discuss the lasting damage this sin inflicts on homosexuals and their loved ones.

Twenty-five years ago, God ...