Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Part I

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The Moral Shift Towards LGBTQ Acceptance – How Did Our Society Get Here?

As you know, June is often declared to be Pride Month, meaning LGBTQ+ Pride Month in the United States. But to understand how this major development came about, which was actually a repudiation, a millennia of human moral wisdom, we need to go back to the year 1969. And an arrest that took place, a raid by the police on a gay bar known as The Stonewall Inn there in New York City. Famously or infamously, those who were in the bar fought back. We’re going to look closer at that event in just a moment. But the important fact is that that particular hallmark event is considered to be the origins of the organized LGBTQ+ movement in the United States. 

But it does raise a host of questions. For one thing, why Pride Month? The specific answer to that question goes back to President Bill Clinton, who near the end of his two terms in office declared that June would be Pride Month in the United States. Now, Bill Clinton was himself an interesting transitional figure. Bill Clinton was elected with the promise that he was going to normalize homosexual troops in the US military. Turns out he couldn’t pull that off, and so he backed off of that particular pledge. But nonetheless, when it came to the entire array of LGBTQ+ issues, Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, were pretty much on the front lines. 

Now, as we will see, there’s some debate about whether or not Pride has lost a bit of its traction in the year 2025. The fast answer is probably not. But it is really important that Christians, thinking in worldview terms, ask ourselves the question of how this moral change could’ve taken place and how it could’ve advanced so quickly. Because when you look at the normalization of homosexuality and other aberrant lifestyles and behaviors under that entire acronym, LGBTQIA+, wherever that’s going to head, it raises massive issues. Because when you look at the history of western civilization and you put it in the context of other civilizations, there’s basically no precedent for anything like the civilization-wide revolution that has come as part of what was originally the gay rights movement, now the LGBTQ+ movement.

Now, this is really part of a far larger question of great interest to Christians, and that is on moral issues, how does society change? How does society which believed, we’ll say 50 years ago, that marriage is and could only be the union of a man and a woman, how can you reach the point that in the early part of this decade, at least a bare majority of Americans indicated that they thought that same-sex marriage was absolutely okay. Now, of course, that was at least five years after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, that plays into this. But as we’re looking in retrospect at this kind of change, we need to make a couple of notations that are very important to us, not only on this issue, but on the larger question of moral change. And of course, the big question there is, what’s next? And we can shudder to think of the answer to that question. 

But let’s just go back to say 1969. In 1969, even the two major political parties in the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans, they were already beginning to separate on many cultural and moral issues, but not at least publicly this one. This was off the screen. It was largely unmentionable. But by the time you get to the 2000 presidential election cycle, everything’s different. By the time you come to 2024, I think just about any informed American knows that you’re looking at a real cleavage in the American people, a real divide, a massive divide over these issues.

Now, let’s look at answering the question how did that happen. Well, for one thing, you have to have a band of absolutely committed activists. Now, we also need to notice here a little footnote, and that is that any movement like this has to really begin with absolutely committed activists, but they have to act as if they’re representing the public at large. In other words, they’re nothing unusual. And even as they may later be described as prophets, the argument comes, “No, we are just representing a vast process of change that is being demanded by millions and millions of people.” Now, nobody really believed that in the beginning of the LGBTQ movement.

But by the time we reached the year 2025, even conservative Christians will concede that something major has changed. Now, of course, our world view doesn’t allow us to believe that the moral reality has changed, but we do recognize that the moral judgment prevailing in our culture, yeah, that’s changed. Now, there is plenty of evidence that it hasn’t changed evenly. And when you look at LGBTQ, the T is clearly an advancing front where many Americans aren’t ready to be pushed all the way yet, and especially when it comes to say transgender transitions, when it comes to children and teenagers or girls playing on boys’ athletic teams. There is still enough residual common sense in this culture to know that something there is just not right.

But long-term, the LGBTQ+ activists are absolutely certain that they have won and will continue to win. They understand that there will be political cycles and there will be some momentary setbacks. But for the mainstream of the LGBTQ+ movement, they’re absolutely certain that their progress is inevitable. Now, another factor that has to play into this kind of widespread social change, especially on an issue as fundamental as, well, human relationships, marriage, LGBTQ+ issues, the sexuality, the entire corpus of sexual morality taken as a whole. In order to have that kind of massive change, you not only have to have a band of committed activists, you have to have facilitators in the society. And one of the main facilitators in this society has been the mainstream media.

And you could add to that the cultural creatives, which in almost every society, by the way, going back to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, the cultural creatives have often been far to the left of the rest of society when it comes to moral judgments and where they also are identified in terms of their lifestyle. Just think of, for instance, the medieval period. Think of many of the most famous of the medieval artists, also some of the classical artists as well. They were guilty of, and were well known to be guilty of, moral transgression at the time. And some of that fit right into the LGBTQ+ category is now defined. They got away with it because the cultural creatives, the cultural elites just often do get away with it, but they also become drivers of moral change throughout the society.

And I mentioned the mainstream media. And here, again, it wasn’t always even at the beginning. But by the time you reach say 2020, just to take an arbitrary date, just about every major editorial board of every major periodical, every newspaper, well, in the digital age, most major media websites, they’re all for, enthusiastically for the DEI array and in particular the LGBTQ+ revolution. But no institution in the media has represented that more graphically, and I mean that just in those terms, more graphically than USA Today. And that’s interesting, because USA Today was established by Gannett and went into publication back in 1980. It was intended to be America’s newspaper. Now, pretty quickly, it was dismissed by the elite media as McPaper, but it has survived.

Even many of the media revolutions that have seen other major newspapers go out of print, USA Today has survived at least thus far, and it is on the left of so many of these cultural issues and avowedly so. So, when you take Pride Month, as you look at just about every daily edition of USA Today, it is preaching on the issue. And I mean, to put it just that way.

Part II

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Surrogacy and the War Against Ontology: Heterosexuality is Biased Towards Procreation – That’s Just Biology

For example, last Thursday, an absolutely amazing piece with a headline, “Gay Couple Navigate Surrogacy System Built for Heterosexuals.” The subhead, “Insurance Often Doesn’t Cover Same Sex Couples.” Adrianna Rodriguez and David Oliver are the reporters, and they begin with a gay couple, a gay male couple who they say, “Wanted kids for at least a decade.” I continue the story, “The New York 30-somethings began their research into surrogacy, and adoption, and determined they would need upward of $100,000.” One of the two said, “We really didn’t know how we were going to get there.” But USA Today tells us as they dove into the process, they quickly discovered the cost of surrogacy in the United States had increased. Estimates vary, but that cost could be as high as double or triple that $100,000 they had planned on. 

Now, here’s the summary statement by USA Today: “It’s a common story among LGBTQ+ people who want to grow their families, but face a medical system that was built for heterosexual couples.” So, you’ll notice here, USA Today is championing the cause of this gay male couple who want to “have children,” and you could put that in quotation marks, and are going to have to hire a surrogate. The reason for that is obvious, two men can’t produce a baby. 

But in this case, two men who claim to be married can also claim to be fathers, because in this case, they finally arranged a surrogacy in which there are two babies. One man’s the father of one of the babies. The other man is the father of the other baby. This is, of course, by IVF technology. All this gets very complicated. But the bottom line is that USA Today is arguing that the fact that the medical system for human reproduction is biased towards heterosexuality, USA Today is clearly stating that’s a problem. 

One of the persons cited in the USA Today article said this, “The history of fertility care is based in a lot of heterosexuality.” Now, honestly, I don’t think you could pay for that kind of sentence. Just consider what’s revealed in that sentence. It’s identified as a problem that reproductive care, fertility care is “based in a lot of heterosexuality.” How much is it based in? Well, throughout human experience, 100%. Nothing less than 100%.

And still, when it comes to human reproduction, guess what? It takes an egg and a sperm cell, which means it takes a male and a female. And so, guess what? Human fertility is still “based in a lot of heterosexuality.” Now, for Christians, this really helps us to understand the depth and the breadth of the moral revolution that has basically completely reformed the American moral landscape. And so, you look at this and you recognize, okay, this isn’t just a revolt against say, the 10 Commandments. It’s not a revolt against two millennia of Christian teaching. It’s not just a revolt against, let’s say the history of western civilization. It’s a revolt against anatomy and physiology. It’s a revolt against, well, you know this word is coming again, ontology. It is a revolt against being.

Now, one of the basic realities of the Christian worldview is that you can rebel against reality, but at the end of the day reality wins. And reality wins even in this case, because even as this article in USA Today is arguing that it is unjust that two gay men can’t easily have a baby, the fact is that left alone, they can’t in any way have a baby. And that’s just reality. It’s biology, it’s physiology, and yes, the history of fertility care is “based in a lot of heterosexuality.” It always has been. And at least at this point, it still is. It can only be that. There’s something else in this article that is a flashpoint. It’s incredibly revealing. We really need to pay attention to it, so listen to the very next statement.

“The same tactics that they use for heterosexual people who have been trying to conceive at home, but can’t, are not appropriate for the LGBTQ folks, or solo parents, who are accessing those same services.” So, again, notice the moral rebellion here. You start out with heterosexual couples. They sometimes have a hard time accessing this kind of care. But when it comes to same-sex couples or “solo parents,” it turns out that they have greater difficulty. Well, that is because a person alone, regardless of whether that person is male or female, can’t have a baby. And two women and two men are in the same position. They can’t have a baby. That is presented here as injustice.

That’s an incredible thing for us to recognize. This is creation order, being absolutely declared to be unjust. Now, the point of this article is that justice or some approximation of justice would only be achieved if gay couples, and you notice the same thing here, single people have the same kind of access to fertility services as heterosexual married couples. Now, I just want to place a footnote here to state that, we have been arguing, and we’ll continue to argue that when it comes to heterosexual married couples, there are significant moral complications with a lot of these advanced reproductive technologies, including IVF. But you’ll notice where this leads. If heterosexual married couples have access to IVF, and if at least in some cases insurance will cover that, then it should be if we live in a just society available to same-sex couples or just to individuals.

Now, even going back to the 1950s and the 1960s, some of the most prophetic voices in terms of, say intellectual life, not just Christian intellectual life, but even secular intellectual life. They were noticing in the 1950s and the 1960s that the cultural elites were increasingly defining, not only say biblical morality, but even physical reality as oppressive. And you can see where that kind of rebellion against creation order leads. Pretty soon you’ve got the declaration that you should talk about solo parents, who by the way aren’t parents yet, who are being treated unjustly, because as a solo they can’t produce a baby. And so, IVF appears to be the obvious answer to that, at least in terms of the secular worldview. And it just gets to the point that, at this point, babies are a consumer commodity. They are a technological product.

And if a heterosexual couple has access to them, then justice would demand that homosexual couples or even single persons have the very same access. That’s where moral rebellion leads. You start to unravel creation order. You say, “I’m only going to unravel it this far.” Well, good luck with that. And I really don’t mean that, because it is never going to happen that you can unravel civilization, you can unravel creation order and just say, “I’m going to stop here. No one can transgress that.” No. Someone’s behind you, ready to transgress that boundary even before the words leave your mouth. By the way, so many authorities in modern medicine have tried to join the revolution, but when it comes to this kind of issue, even many of those in the professions who would like to join the revolution, they’re having difficulty doing it.

For instance, even right now, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine defines infertility as a condition in which heterosexual couples can’t conceive after a year of, let’s just say trying to have a baby. Let’s just notice that, that means that heterosexual couples have to try to have a baby for a year before they’re even defined or diagnosed as having a problem, which can be called infertility. But when you take a gay male couple or a lesbian couple, or a single person, guess what? You can try to have a baby for year after year, after year. It’s not going to happen, and it’s not because of injustice. Now, once again, thinking about how moral change happens, and we talk about unraveling. It’s really important to just concede the fact that if you were to talk to someone who was even a liberal in many of these issues 20 or 30 years ago, they wouldn’t believe we’re talking about this.

And you ask for evidence of that? Okay, I’ll give you evidence of that. Look at the statements made by someone like Bill Clinton or put Bill and Hillary Clinton together. Look at statements made by Barack Obama, who remember was against same-sex marriage before he was for it. No one actually believes that Barack Obama was against same-sex marriage when he ran for the White House in 2008. He had already been for it as a member of the Illinois legislature. But he was for it, then he was against it, then he was for it. And you all have to recognize, even as his own vice president at the time, Joe Biden, made clear, it was all about waiting for adequate political change. USA Today also ran a major article by Michael Collins. The headline is “Stonewall Vets Sound Alarm.” That means veterans of the Stonewall Rebellion, given the fact that it happened in 1969, there can’t be that many left, or at least their numbers are thinning year by year.

Michael Collins tells the story of the police raid at The Stonewall Inn, and then the beginning of the pushback and what we now know as the LGBTQ+ movement. Listen to this. “The bar’s patrons, a colorful cocktail of gay men, lesbians, trans people, bikers, and street kids had survived police harassment and similar raids many other times. By the time police barged into the bar that unusually hot summer morning, they’d had enough. They fought back with the fists and fury of a people tired of being targeted and condemned for who they are.” Now, here’s what I want you to know. This is supposedly a news story, or at least a feature news story, in a major American newspaper. It is written as nothing short of absolute propaganda for the LGBTQ+ movement. It is undiluted propaganda. It is not reporting in any kind of journalistic dispassionate way about a major development in America. It is championing that development and it is doing so, well, almost as if Pravda were publishing this in the Soviet Union or some other form of ideological press was just running with this. 

You need to recognize that when it comes to USA Today, they have declared themselves absolutely, enthusiastically, unreservedly, not only for the LGBTQ+ revolution, but frankly for whatever comes after. My point in raising this particular article or rather lengthy article in USA Today, is just to make the point again of where USA Today stands.

Part III

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USA Today as a Barometer for the Culture – Look at the Pages of This Liberal Newspaper for a Good Idea on Where Society is on LGBTQ Issues

All right. Then, as if they hadn’t done enough. Just yesterday, USA Today ran an article, “Bishop would love to discuss LGBTQ+ rights.” In this case, the Bishop is none other than the Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, who is the Episcopal bishop of Washington D.C. And of course, she’s a heroine on the left for having confronted President Donald Trump in an inaugural ceremony. It was a huge controversy.

But as Deborah Barfield Berry for USA Today reports, “Despite being attacked by him online, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde said she would meet with President Donald Trump if it would lead to a meaningful discussion about protecting the rights of LGBTQ people or communities.” “I would love to actually have a real person-to-person conversation about the things that matter. I’m always open to that,” said Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Well, let’s just intercept that particular thought here and say that’s not going to happen. But frankly, it’s not in the realm of possibility, and that’s not why this article appeared. It ended up in an interview format in USA Today, just as an opportunity for Bishop Budde to make the statements she wanted to make, such as when she talks about the applause and support she received after her statement confronting the President. Very inappropriate for an inaugural ceremony I would add.

She said, “That says to me, okay, this is who we are. These are the values that we want to stand for, and that’s who we are as a church. That’s who I am as a bishop. That’s who my fellow Christians are in the denomination I serve. I’m really proud.” What I want to point out is that nowhere in this article does the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Washington D.C. ever make reference to Scripture or the moral tradition of the church. Those are not even mentioned. The moral authority in her judgment is none other than the bishop herself. And she is sold out for the gay rights movement, for Pride Month, for all that’s included in LGBTQ.

She makes this statement also. She says she was ordained in 1984. And she’s been an advocate for LGBTQ rights for a long time. She says that when she was ordained as a woman and her church didn’t ordain women in any sense as well until 1979, she says, “I was hearing a lot of the same arguments both theologically and sociologically that had been used against women. It did not ring true to my experience.” So, you just think about that for a moment. She tells us what her moral authority is. Her moral authority is her experience, but it’s not just her experience. It is her experience as someone who is, well, among the women ordained in a very liberal denomination that frankly has abandoned the Scripture. And certainly has, if not repudiated, it has at least abandoned scriptural authority.

It’s just very interesting we see this statement. But she also says something else. Speaking of Pride Month, she says, “I pray that it is a really joyful, inspiring gathering where people feel safe, where they feel seen, where they feel supported, where they can laugh and learn. Maybe it is a good antidote to some of the meaner rhetoric that has been unnecessarily hurtful and just to be a balm for people. We all need that.” Well, again, the language is incredibly powerful here. It tells us something. So, you’ll notice the language of the modern therapeutic movement that is basically just mixed here with modern critical theory. The goal is to make people “feel safe.” What does that mean? Well, this emotional safety is something that’s being used all across the board, where you have people say, “I don’t feel safe,” which means, “If you don’t affirm me, then I don’t feel safe. Your purpose on the planet is to make me feel safe.” And that means confirming all individuals in whatever identity or behaviors they claim where they feel seen.

So, this gets back to one of the, well, very interesting aspects of some of the revolutionary thought in the early 20th century. And that is, that if you want to affect moral change, you have to get right in the face of the people, right in the face of the society all the time. And this was the language, “Demand to be seen.” Well, that’s immediately what we recognize in this statement, where they can laugh and learn and be supported. And so, you’ll just notice how the therapeutic language here is the ultimate authority. The interview with the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Washington D.C. ends with a theological assessment.

The paper says, “What do you say to Christians who have left the church because of things politicians have done in God’s name?” The bishop responds, “I understand the grief and pain of that. I wish I could assure them that if the image of God that they’re carrying as a result of that is of a cruel and judgmental and angry God, that is not the God that I believe in or worship. And that there is always love, and mercy, and goodness at the heart of God.” Again, very interesting. There’s disclosive language here. She doesn’t speak about the God who is. She’s not making reference to the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. She’s not referring to the God who is the creator of the entire cosmos.

She’s referring to the God of her own imagination. The God that in her words is the God that she believes in and worships. Now, whether she intended to acknowledge the basis of her entire theological system or not, the bottom line fact is she did. And this was published in USA Today. Again, another piece of what’s basically propaganda. But this is a piece that Christians concerned in understanding not only the world around us, but understanding the basic theological issues at stake. This is the kind of interview that accidentally we have to assume ends up disclosing all of that in one piece. And just to make the point about USA Today, as a barometer of the culture, McPaper, as I said it was early criticized to be, came out with a special edition, a special magazine entitled Pride, and it comes in at no less than 56 pages.

So, you want to talk about an agenda, you want to talk about a moral agenda, you want to talk about a worldview agenda, you want to talk about propaganda, well, there it is for sale at your local newsstand. You want to know how all these issues are connected? It goes back to creation order, and it goes back to Scripture. It goes back to the fact that here is a woman bishop in a liberal denomination, all of that’s problematic, of course, speaking in terms of advocacy for the God she believes in and worships, which she doesn’t even claim is the God of the Bible or of the historic Christian church.

So, you wonder how all this has happened. Well, here’s a quick answer. That is how all this has happened.