The sermon I'm doing today is actually a topical sermon, one of the rare topical sermons I do. It's an excursus. An excursus is an expansion on some topic, kind of a side part. Like if you were to take a trip to some country and you do an excursion, it would be a side trip to another country or another spot. Well, that's kind of what this is. But I do want to read this passage that we've been going through in our exposition of Romans as a backdrop, again, for the sermon. So we're going to pick it up in Romans chapter 1. starting with verse 20. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor God as God, nor give him thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie in worship and served the creature rather than the creator who was blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. Mea culpa. You ever heard those words before? Do you know what they mean? They're Latin, and they're found in a Roman Catholic prayer of confession. Mia means my, and culpa, from which we get the word culpability, means guilt or fault. So a mia culpa is an admission that something was my fault, or as the kids would say today, that was my bad. A few months ago, there were two official mea culpas given to the homosexual community on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot. As History.com website describes it, quote, the Stonewall Riots, also called the Stonewall Uprising, began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, when New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as the police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar. Within minutes, a full-blown riot involving hundreds of people began. The police, a few prisoners, and a Village Voice writer barricaded themselves in the bar, which the mob attempted to set on fire after breaching the barricade repeatedly. The fire department and the riot squad were eventually able to douse the flames, rescue those inside Stonewall, and disperse the crowds. But the protests sometimes involved thousands of people continued in the area for five more days, flaring up at one point when the Village Voice published an account of the riots. The Stonewall riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. Well, this last June 6th, the New York City Police Commissioner, James O'Neill, apologized for the police raids at Stonewall years before. He said, quote, the actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple. The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive. And for that, I apologize. On June 21st of this last year, the American Psychoanalytical Association issued their mea culpa for a previous treatment of homosexuals as a mental illness, saying that their past errors had contributed to discrimination and trauma for LGBT people. TQ people, and speaking for this organization, their president, Lee Jaffe, said, it's long past time to recognize and apologize for our role in the discrimination and trauma caused by our profession and say we are sorry. Wow. The work of the revolution is almost finished. Homosexuality, which was once deemed a crime under the law, a mental illness by psychiatrists, and disproved of by the overwhelming majority is now held up as a moral virtue that not only should be accepted but celebrated by all. And rather than homosexuals being called on to repent of their sins, Christians are being called on to repent of ever believing homosexuality was a sin. Denouncing the moral revolutionaries of his own day, Isaiah said these words, Woe to those who call good evil and evil good, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. How did we get to this point in our nation's history? How is the other side able to overturn the moral consensus in our society? And what's the ultimate goal or goals of the sexual revolutionaries? These are the questions we want to answer as we consider this portion of God's word this morning. So why don't we pray and ask for his help. Father God, I do pray for grace and mercy. I pray that you'd help us to see This is specifically to the context of the American society, but Lord, it's applicable to those who will be listening through the internet, because the same tactics are used in their countries that have been used in ours. So we pray a blessing for all who hear. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, two weeks ago, we took a broad overview of the entire scripture, of the passages that speak on the issue of homosexuality. And last week, we went back into the specific text in Romans, where we were working on, to show how Paul deals with this issue in the broader context of chapter 1. And why is it that this is the particular sin that Paul picks out as an example of what happens when people give up their pursuit of the glory of God and settle for lesser things, worship the creature rather than the Creator, who he says is blessed forever. And like I said, today I want to consider the issue as it relates to the American experience, and there's three things I want to cover in this. First of all, a short history of the homosexual movement in America, just some of the highlights. Secondly, the tactics that the advocates have employed, and I would say quite effectively, in promoting their cause. And third, the long-term goals of the sexual revolutionaries. Now, some of what I talk about today will go beyond specifically the issue of homosexuality, but these things are connected, the transgender movement and broader issues in the sexual revolution that's taking place before our eyes. So, let's start at the beginning, the history of the movement. Now, years ago, I was working in the restaurant industry, and the general manager at the place that I was at got transferred, and so they told us we were going to get a new manager. It was a woman that I knew of, but I did not know her personally. She had worked in that company for quite a while. And so on the first day that she was there, she sat me and another manager down to introduce herself. And I remember she said something along this line. She said, you know, I'd like to tell you a little bit about my history so that you know where I'm coming from. My people came here from France back in the 1700s. Now, two thoughts immediately came to my mind when she said that. First of all, I think this conversation is going to be a little bit longer than just the lunch break we're taking. And secondly, I don't know how this is going to be relevant to selling burgers and fries. Well, a little bit of history is relevant and necessary to understand where we are in our nation in this point on this issue of homosexuality. But where should we start? I mean, how far back? Where do we go? Well, the roots of the homosexual movement, the gay rights movement in the United States, goes back to the late 1800s and 1900s, but you have to start not in San Francisco, and not in New York City, but actually in Berlin, Germany. While there's always been secret societies that have advocated for homosexuality and engaged in such lifestyles, the first person who was ever really a public advocate for it was a man named Magnus Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld was born to a Jewish family in what was then the state of Prussia. Educated in Germany as a sexologist, in 1897, he founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which, according to the historian Dennis Goltz, carried on the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights. Hirschfeld's ideas changed very much the way Germans thought about homosexuality. Early part of the 1900s in Germany was in many ways similar to the 60s in our country. There was a movement at the time, what was called Lebensreform, life reform, in Germany and in Switzerland. And it was kind of a romantic movement, not romantic like kiss your girlfriend, but in a political sense. And they propagated back-to-nature lifestyles, emphasizing, among other things, health foods, raw foods, nudity, sexual liberation, alternative medicines, religious reforms, but they abstained from alcohol and tobacco, and they were very much opposed to vaccines. By the way, some of these same things you see going on in our culture today. One such group of Germans like this were called the Nature Boys. They emigrated from the United States to California and became an influence on the hippie movement. Well, because the German higher critics had already undermined the authority of the scripture, the church was spiritually weak, and many people were adrift. And so they were open to new philosophies and religions, but also new views on sexuality. Now, Magnus Hirschfeld himself was a homosexual, and he lived a while in the United States, in Chicago, and he was surprised by how similar the Chicago homosexual subculture was to that in Berlin. Now, Hirschfeld was a psychologist who counseled homosexual men, and one of his patients committed suicide, and it affected him deeply. And so he became convinced that the problem with society is disapproval of homosexuality that accounted for the high rate of suicide among German homosexuals. And he argued that homosexuality was just normal and natural, and he publicly campaigned in Germany to have the laws against sodomy repealed. In 1919, along with his friend, Arthur Kronfeld, a German-Jewish psychiatrist, Hirschfeld opened up the Institute for Sexology, which remained open until it was closed by the Nazis in the 30s. By the way, Hirschfeld was the one who coined the term transvestite and also transsexual. He was also a strong supporter of abortion. His friend and colleague, Harry Benjamin, later went on to do sex reassignment surgeries. They were doing them in the 30s already. Did you know that? Well, the period between World War I and World War II was known as the Weimar Republic for Germany, and that time became famous, or we probably would better say infamous, for the sexual looseness, especially in Berlin, in the capital. You could go down to any cabaret and watch live sex acts on stage in Berlin. It was far more raucous than what you would find even in New York City today. Well, at the time, there was all kinds of political turmoil. One of the groups that arose at the time was the SA. You probably know them as the Brown Shirts. They became larger than the actual German military at the time, and they were headed by a friend of Adolf Hitler's whose name was Ernst Röhm. And Röhm was the top leader in the movement, but along with the other leaders, he was a homosexual. And so, having outlived his usefulness, the Fuhrer had him murdered along the line with other SA leaders in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives. And after that, the Nazis began to clamp down on homosexuality in Germany. Well, how does that connect to America? Well, it's through a man named Henry Gerber, who was working as a homosexual activist in Germany in 1929 when he met a man named Henry, or Harry Hay, who died, by the way, just back in 2002. He was quite old. He was from Los Angeles. Now, Hay was a communist and an atheist, and he started what was known as the Medellin Society, which was the first homosexual advocate group in the United States. By the way, a couple things I found interesting, I was doing a study on this. It was interesting to me the number of people who were in the early part of the movement who were Jewish. And the other thing that was interesting was almost everyone in the early part of the movement was a socialist. I don't think it's that surprising that at the same time we're seeing a revamping of the sexual revolution, there's calls for socialism in this country as well. Those two things are actually connected. Well, the next sexual revolution got going in the 1920s. That's the reason they called it the Roaring Twenties. But the Great Depression put a damper on it for a while. And so during the 40s and the 50s, homosexuality was going on. But it was kept in the closet, as they used to say. And yet there were homosexuals at the time. Did you know that J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, himself was a closet homosexual? He had information on the Kennedys in the 60s, that's why they couldn't get rid of him. But he had stuff on him, and so there was always this tension between them. Well, there were rumors that went around about Hollywood stars, but most of these things were not talked about in the open. But then came the 60s. And there seemed to be a spontaneous uprising against the norms of our culture. Young people began to tune out and to turn on to drugs and sex and rock and roll and to make love, not war, as they said. The pill freed women from the fear of pregnancy. Playboy made pornography mainstream. And the court struck down obscenity laws, and Hollywood started to make more movies that were sexually graphic. And after the success of the Civil Rights Movement, the gay rights groups began to protest against the sodomy laws. In 1970, the first gay pride took place in New York City. In 1973, the Board of American Psychiatric Association voted to delist homosexuality as a mental illness. And in 1974, Kathy Kazachenko became the first openly gay American elected to public office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Well, then came along a woman named Anita Bryant. Have you ever heard of her? Anita Bryant? She kind of faded from the scene. She was at one time the sunshine girl, they called her. She was the advocate for the Florida orange growers. Well, when they put forth a proposal for an ordinance in Dade County that would have protected homosexuals and allowed them to teach not only in public schools openly, but also in private Christian schools where her children attended. She talked to her pastor and he urged her to take the issue public, which she did. So she succeeded in getting a repeal of this law on the ballot, and it passed by 70%. As a result, Brian became not only the best known, but also the most vilified gay rights opponent. She lost her job as a spokesman for the Florida Orange Growers. She was denounced by Hollywood stars like Jane Fonda, Mary Tyler Moore, and singers like Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand. She has the distinction of being the first person who was ever pied in public on television. Do you know what it means to pie somebody? She was talking and someone came up and hit her in the face with a pie. Well, her singing career came to a halt, her marriage failed, and she found out that there is a high, high price to pay if you take on the gay lobby. The 1980s brought the AIDS epidemic. Thousands of homosexuals died from the disease, including well-known stars like Rock Hudson and singer Freddie Mercury. He announced that he had AIDS and the very next day he died. Massive federal funding went into AIDS research. 1993, the Department of Defense instituted what they called their Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Before that, you could not serve in the military if you were a homosexual, an open homosexual. Their policy was, as long as you don't tell, we won't ask about it, and we'll leave it alone. 1996, in Romer v. Evans, the United States Supreme Court struck down Colorado's Second Amendment, which the voters had passed to bar the state government from declaring homosexuality a protected class. In 2000, getting closer to our time, Vermont became the first state in the U.S. to legalize civil unions and register partnerships between homosexuals. 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws against our anti-sodomy laws in the U.S. as unconstitutional. By the way, just 10 years earlier, they ruled that those laws were constitutional. So evidently, one of those Supreme Courts was wrong on their understanding. 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage. The court findings that the prohibition on gay marriage was unconstitutional because it denies the dignity and equality of all persons. 2008, California passed what was called Proposition 8. Proposition 8 made marriage between one man and one woman the only legal and permitted marriage in California. Can you believe that passed in California? There is no way that would pass in California. I'm not sure it would pass in hardly any state today. It didn't last very long. The next year, a federal judge in San Francisco decided that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry, and therefore, Proposition 8 was declared unconstitutional, despite the fact that it was part of the Constitution. The judge who made the decision at the time was himself a homosexual. December 18, 2010. United States Senate votes to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, allowing gays to serve in the military openly. 2011, President Obama states his administration will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans the recognition of same-sex marriage, which had been passed under the Clinton administration by an overwhelming majority and signed by President Clinton himself. In June 2011, New York State passes the Marriage Equity Act, becoming the largest state so far to legalize gay marriage. And in June of that same year, or 2015, they had the 5-4 decision of Obergefell versus Hodges. And that one, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that same-sex marriage had to be legal in all 50 states. And on that same night that the decision was announced, the White House was lit up with rainbow colors. Since that time, Christian bakers and Christian florists have been criminally charged in various states for refusing to offer their services to celebrate homosexual marriage. Several weeks ago, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke was asked if churches that oppose same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status. He answered yes, and there was hearty applause. He went on to say this, quote, there can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and full civil rights of every single one of us. And so as President, we're going to make that a priority, and we're going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans. There's a couple cases that are before the Supreme Court that they'll be ruling on this year. One of them, in particular, has to do with whether the civil rights acts that had been passed will have the idea of sexual orientation and transgenderism added to it. Now, when these rights were passed, when the bills were passed, there was no concept of this whatsoever. But what they're saying is it should include it, even though that's not what the intent of the law is. Folks, I want you to think about that. That's a very dangerous thing, because if we make decisions and rule based on things that have nothing to do with the law, just whatever we want at the time, by definition, we are a lawless nation. What are the tactics that were employed? By the way, I have to add this. I've got a number of people I've worked with over the years who are homosexuals, and I am not trying to say that all the people who are homosexuals are pushing in this agenda. But there is an agenda that's been pushed. And you see that every time you pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV. What are the tactics that have been employed? I mean, how did they go about overcoming the views of homosexuality that had prevailed in our country for a long time? Well, the first thing they did, and this goes all the way back to Hirschfeld, was they defined homosexuality as a mental illness. I mean, think about it. We blame people for being a thief. We don't blame them for being a paraplegic. And Magnus believed that if we could deal with homosexuality as a scientific and a medical issue rather than a moral one, then condemnation would give way to pity, pity to tolerance, and tolerance to acceptance. I think he was right. Second thing that happened, though, was they began to portray homosexuals in the media as a persecuted minority who just wanted to be left alone. I'm old enough to remember movies in the 70s that would deal with the issue of homosexuality in a very oblique way. But time and time again, the person who was the homosexual was the one who was mistreated and was poorly thought of, and the hero in the program was always the person defending them. Third thing they did was they simply asked for reasonable accommodations. And I remember how it went. I was from Minnesota at the time. We had a senator. His name was Paul Wellstone. He was way to the left on the political spectrum. Died in a plane crash, I believe, a number of years ago. But when he was asked about civil unions and homosexual marriages, he said, yes, I believe that civil unions should be granted as a matter of justice, but not marriage, not homosexual marriage. I don't think we could go there. There is no possible way if Paul Wellstone were alive today he would hold that position. You see, the idea was, well, shouldn't we have something that's at least equivalent? We're not asking. And I heard that again and again. Nobody's talking about gay marriage. Nobody's talking about gay marriage. And you remember a few years back when this issue came up in Minnesota and there was a campaign for a constitutional amendment, the people on the other side who were the pro-homosexual side said, this is absolutely unnecessary. There's laws already about this. This is just to, of course, that wasn't their goal, was it? It was to obfuscate. So, you know, this is what's called the salami tactic. You know, just give me a slice off the bottom and I'll be fine. And now just give me another slice off the bottom and another slice, and eventually, it's all the slices. Well, the next thing they did was they demanded equal rights. And one of the things that happened was they associated gay rights with civil rights of blacks. Both were portrayed as a persecuted minority who have had historical injustices foisted upon them. I don't know if you know this, but there's far less support for gay marriage in the black community than there is in the white community. Did you know that? Part of the reason is because a lot of black people resent the fact that they're lumped in with this because they say, look, I'm black. That's what I am. That's a God given. And you're saying that a life choice is equivalent to that. Well, the other thing they did during those years was they used the courts to bypass the democratic process. What do I mean by that? Well, if you can get a judge to make a declaration, you don't have to lobby Congress. You don't have to get it through. And that's what they're doing with this last one on transgender rights. They know they can't get this through the Congress, and for that reason, they're going through the courts. The fifth thing they did, and this is very, very important. They reframed the debate. The debate now is not, is homosexuality wrong? But rather, why are you homophobic? George Weinberg was a psychotherapist. He coined that term homophobic back in the 60s. Psychologist Greg Herrick of the U of California Davis said this, quote, The term stood a central assumption of heterosexual society on its head by locating the problem of homosexuality not with homosexual people, but in the heterosexuals who were intolerant of gay men and lesbians. Well, the next logically had to follow out of this. you have to demonize your opponents. So people who support what they call traditional marriage now are referred to as hate-filled bigots, intolerant. The Supreme Court, when they ruled in the decision on gay marriage, said that there was no logical, no reasonable, no rational reason for outlawing gay marriage, and the court specifically said the only possible motive could be animus, which means hatred. After the win in the court by the pro-homosexual side, there was an article that came out where the question was being asked, well, now that we've won this, shouldn't we maybe offer an olive branch to the people on the other side, the evangelicals? Frank Bruni, who writes for the New York Times, who himself is a homosexual, was very outraged by the suggestion. He said, how can we offer them an olive branch, considering what they did? He said, we'll offer an olive branch after they apologize for all the AIDS deaths that took place over the last 20 years. Now, I want you to think about that for a second. What he's saying is that evangelical Christians were responsible for all the people who died of AIDS in the previous 25 years. Now, when I read that, I was thinking to myself, how would he have come to that? The best I could think of is if evangelical Christians had campaigned against AIDS research money, but I don't know of any who ever did. Do you understand what I'm saying? There's a verse in the Bible that says this in the Proverbs. The wicked man destroys his own life, and yet his heart rages against the Lord. I've seen a number of evangelical groups that have had conferences now where they bring together advocates for the gay community, and it's to have a dialogue, as they say. And one of the things I've noticed is, inevitably in this, the evangelical side gives pronouncements of asking for forgiveness for the way they've treated homosexuals. Hmm. A couple things. I don't ever remember, before this issue came into the public forum, my pastors ever asking us to campaign and to march around gay bars or anything like that. The apology they want is for saying that there's anything wrong with it. And that's where the compromise is already coming. The next thing they do, though, is they indoctrinate through the public schools. Back when I was in school at St. Cloud State, I had to have a human relations class to become a teacher, and about half of that class was dedicated to the issue of gay rights. We had a person who came in who had AIDS to talk to us, and we were specifically told ahead of time that we were not allowed to say anything that was negative about homosexuality or question the morality of it. And if we did, we would be given an F. Now, that was 25, 30 years ago. I guarantee it's much more now. The kids here, in this school, I saw t-shirts being made in the art room about anti-bullying things. Now, here's how they do it. They say, should kids be bullied in school? Well, who's going to say yes? Well, no, they shouldn't be bullied. Well, some kids may have issues with their sexuality. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to institute an educational system and curriculum that fights against that. And so the kids at the youngest age, including 5, 6, and 7 in California, are being exposed to books that promote homosexuality, videos that promote homosexuality, In California, in some of the schools, you cannot become a teacher unless you have a whole section on this, and one of the things it requires is that you visit a gay bar. My daughter was going to school to be a social worker, and one of the reasons she stepped out of it was because they were pushing in this direction, and she could not in good conscience support it. Well, the next thing that they did, though, is they demand that everybody not only tolerate, but affirm and celebrate. And that's what the cake bakers and the florists are all about. By the way, in those two cases, or two or three cases that they've had like that, the baker did not say, you can't buy a cake here. You can buy any cake you want. I just cannot decorate one specifically to celebrate this. Same with the florist. The two gays, the guys that had come in, asked for flowers for their wedding. She said, well, you can buy stuff. And she had sold stuff to them both before, but she was being hired specifically to celebrate it. Now in Colorado, where one of these places went on, or one of these events went on, there was a Christian guy who called a baker who was known to be gay and asked for a cake to be made supporting traditional marriage. And they said no. And so he filed charges with the Colorado Human Rights Commission. And he did that on purpose to show, okay, we got it on one side, we got it on the other side, is there a balance here? And the Colorado Human Rights Commission said no, because these people have deeply held views and to force them to bake a cake supporting traditional marriage would be a violation of their free speech rights. I want to tell you something a pastor told me one time. He was preaching and he said, guys, keep in mind, Jesus never promised that we would get a fair fight. We're not going to get a fair fight. Well, here's the last thing that they're doing. You use the power of the government to persecute those who don't clap hard enough and long enough. You know, when Beto O'Rourke made that comment and everyone clapped, there were a lot of people on his side of the aisle who were not pleased that he had said that. Now, the reason they weren't pleased was not because they didn't hold those views. They did hold those views, but he let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. You're not supposed to say these things, you're supposed to wait until you get into power and then implement them. You know, speaking of clapping, it actually happened one time when Joseph Stalin was giving a speech before the Russian Politburo. And after he was done, the people got up and started to clap. And clap. and clap for five minutes, for 10 minutes, for 15 minutes, for 25 minutes. For 45 minutes, they clapped. And then finally, one general sat down, and then they all sat down. The next day, that general was taken out and shot. And the last thing they told him before he died was, don't ever be the first to stop clapping for Comrade Stalin. Now, we're seeing a lot of people in the evangelical movement who are clapping. We're seeing people who are at least saying, We're seeing very few who are saying, no, this is a sin, and we have to deal with it as a sin. We have to take a stand for a biblical morality on sexuality. We have to love people, and what they need is the gospel, because that's what every sinner needs, including us. But you're going to see in the years to come a lot of evangelicals collapse on this issue. Well, what's the ultimate goal? I mean, is the ultimate goal just equality? I wish it were. I think there's a number of things. I'm going to give you five that I think are goals of the movement. The first is this, the abolishment of marriage. I didn't bring the quotes with me, but there was a number of people I found that said that, that our goal ultimately is not to have homosexual marriage, but to do away with marriage altogether. Did you know that in European countries where they've had gay marriage for 25 years, homosexuals generally don't marry? That was never the goal. You see, the most basic unit of society is the family. If that goes, everything goes. I know that Pastor Alan and Joel, when they pick up kids for school and they have to drop them off, well, you need to drop me off at this mom's house or that mom's house. I don't think I'm going to the third mom's house until next Tuesday. My niece one time, after my sister got divorced, was sitting on my lap. She was, I think, seven years old. And as she was, she looked up at me, and she had a real stern look on her face. And she said, how come I have two beds? I said, what do you mean, how come you have two beds? Well, I got two beds. I got a bed at Dad's house and a bed at Mom's house. I said, yeah. She said, Christine, that's my daughter, she only has one bed. I said, yeah. She said, I have two beds. Yep. That's not fair. She was seven years old, and she knew something wasn't right. Second goal is the end of what's called the gender binary, the idea that you're either male or female. Now, we're laughing at that. What could be more ridiculous than to think that you're neither a boy or a girl, or that if you're a boy, you can be a girl? But as we're laughing, it's becoming the law. I've heard from some of my confirmation kids that there's a number of kids in their school now who are identifying as the opposite sex. I do not believe for one minute they would be identifying as the opposite sex 40 years ago. they wouldn't even think of it. They want to get rid of the idea of gender. And so there's places like New York City where you can have your birth certificate rewritten to say that you were born of the opposite sex. That's a lie. It's not true. But you can have it done. And the military pays now for gender reassignment. People in prison can get gender reassignment. They're doing this with kids as young as five years of age. They cut off their sexual organs and pump them full of hormones from the opposite sex. There was a case in Texas recently where the dad protested this, and he was threatened to have his rights taken away, and they went forward with it. Here's a third thing. They're looking for the realization of what they would consider a pansexual paradise. Pansexual, all-sexual paradise. I asked this in my Bible study the other day. Have you ever heard the phrase, thruple? Thruple. Sounds like a game you should be playing with dice, doesn't it? No, that's not what it is. Thruple is a contraction of two words. Couple and three. Thruple. One of the articles I read was a couple, a man and a wife, who were both pastors on staff with Willow Creek Church in Chicago. And they later left that. I don't know that it's connected with it other than the fact that they were professed Christians. But they brought into their life another woman. So now the wife is involved in a lesbian relationship with her, and the husband is involved in a sexual relationship with him. The three of them share a bed. And what was interesting to me was the article that I read, there was not one suggestion there was anything morally even questionable about this. The only question was, how are they doing it? How is it working out? Is it jealousy? Isn't there a program? I've never seen it, but isn't there a program called Sister Wives? I think the gist of it is multiple women married to one guy. You want a prediction from your pastor? Sometime in the next decade or so, either the Muslims or the Mormons are going to petition the court to allow for polygamous marriage. When the United States ruled on it back in the 1890s, the Supreme Court said that our country is a Christian nation that presupposes Christian laws. For this reason, it is not allowed to practice polygamy. Is there anyone who believes the court would rule that way today? So it's just a matter of time before these things fall as well. In Germany, a different country, but in Germany a few years back, a sister and brother petitioned the courts to marry. The court turned them down, for now. There's a whole lot more that's coming down the pike. And because the Supreme Court, instead of going back to the Constitution, tends to go back to the last decision, or at least the last decision they want to support, These things have moved from one to another to another to another. Two more. One of the goals is the establishment of socialism in the United States. Think, where do you get that from? There's a logic. You destroy the family, you destroy these other authority figures, and there's only you and the government. And once there's only you and the government, because the company you own is actually now owned by the government and directed by them, they will have the means of protection. And here's the last one. I believe this is the ultimate goal. The outlying of the Bible as hate speech and the preaching of the gospel as a hate crime. In Canada, when the first hate crimes legislation and hate speech legislation was put in place, the member of parliament, who himself was a homosexual at the time, was asked, under this bill, would the Bible be considered a form of hate speech, hate literature? And the man refused to answer. Now, why did he refuse to answer? Because if he answered no, in the future, when they tried to bring that, they would say, no, it was never part of the legislation. It was specifically said. And if he answered yes, it would be obvious what this was all about. And so he kept silent. And they passed it. And in Canada now, there's a guy named David Lynn who's gotten into trouble a number of times just for preaching the gospel on the sidewalk because people who are homosexuals in the area were offended. And so he was arrested on one occasion by a guy who was one of the main advocates, who was a police officer, also one of the main advocates for the homosexual movement in that area. Let me read from you. This is back in 1987. The leader was Steve Warren from the group ACT UP, which is a pro-homosexual advocacy group. Listen to what he says. This was published in The Advocate, the nation's most prominent homosexual magazine. He gives a list of things. Henceforth, homosexuality... He's addressing the churches and what the church is. It's kind of a shot across the bow. This is what we're going to do, whether you like it or not, to the churches. Henceforth, homosexuality will be spoken of in your churches and synagogues as an honorable estate. Number one. Two. You can either let us marry people of the same sex, or better yet, abolish marriage altogether. Three. You will be expected to offer ceremonies that bless our sexual arrangements. You will also be instructing your people in homosexual as well as heterosexual behavior. And you'll go out of your way to make certain that homosexual youths are allowed to date, attend religious functions together, openly display affection, and enjoy each other's sexuality without embarrassment or guilt. Number four. If any of the older people in your midst object, you will deal with them sternly, making certain that they renounce their ugly and ignorant homophobia or suffer public humiliation. Number five, you will also make certain that laws are passed forbidding discrimination against homosexuals and heavy punishments are assessed. Number six, finally, we will in all likelihood want to expunge a number of passages from your scripture and rewrite others, eliminating preferential treatment of marriage and using words that will allow for homosexual interpretations of passages describing biblical lovers, such as Ruth and Boaz or Solomon and Queen Sheba. Warning, if all these things do not come to pass quickly, we will subject Orthodox Jews and Christians to the most sustained hatred and vilification in recent memory. We have captured the liberal establishment and press. We have already beaten you on a number of battlefields. You have neither the faith nor the strength to fight us, so you might as well surrender now." Let me give you some final thoughts as we finish up here. Here's the first one. The sexual revolutionaries have just about completed their task. You know, if I ever write a book on this issue, I already have the title for it. I'm going to entitle the book, America and the Coming Pornocracy. Because increasingly, the rights that are found in the Constitution are being ignored and trampled, and erotic rights, which do not exist, are being enshrined. Number two, however, their ultimate success is not inevitable. For one thing, strangely enough, there may be a backlash from the feminist movement. Women are being displaced. Oh, you would not believe the number of women's sports records that have fallen in just the last year or two, because transgender men go in and shatter them. There was one where they were doing ultimate fighting, and it was a transgender man, it was a man, who joined in the women's division of it, He won and pulverized the woman and broke her jaw and almost killed her. But this is what freedom's going to bring us, folks. There's also the possibility that America will repent and God will send revival. The most important thing we can do, listen carefully, as a church, is not to write our congressmen. It's to preach the gospel. Because it doesn't matter whether you're homosexual or heterosexual. That's what we need. All of us are messed up. All of our sexualities are messed up. What we need is the grace of God and forgiveness. Number three, Christians will face increasing pressure in this area in the years to come. There's no way around it. We meet in a school, and we're very thankful that we do. It's been a good relationship for 16 years, but at some point, somebody's going to complain. I heard a homophobic sermon on the internet. These people meet in the school. We pay taxes, get these people out, and they're going to kick us out. In New York City already, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled three times that you cannot do what's called viewpoint discrimination, which is that you can't hold a group out because you don't like what they're saying. Recently, the Supreme Court decided not to hear a case where it came up again. There was a church that was meeting in a school, and the city passed a ban that no churches can meet in public accommodation places that are owned by the state or the city. And the Supreme Court decided not to hear it, despite the fact that they ruled on it three times before, which means they're going in a different direction on this one. And number four, our side ultimately is going to win on this. our side is ultimately going to win on this. One of the things you're going to hear all the time is this. You're Christians, you're not on the right side of history. And what they mean by that is history has to move in a certain direction, a progressive leftist direction, and open sexual experience, and also autonomy on all these issues, and you're on the wrong side. But if you read the book of Revelation, they're on the wrong side. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's going to judge both the righteous and the wicked, and the truth is going to win out in the end. And we win now, not by changing the laws, not by even changing the culture, but remaining faithful and proclaiming the truth, whatever happens. If we do that, if we do that, we'll be in great shape. Listen carefully. You don't have to give a me a culpa for the truth of the Word of God. And don't buy into the idea that because you don't support a certain lifestyle, you're a hater. Who loves the person the most? the one who tells them the truth. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father God, we need grace and mercy. Because in the midst of these political battles that the church cannot avoid, because even if we want to just quietly keep to ourselves, they're not going to allow that. But in the midst of that, there's people involved in this movement whose lives are being destroyed. They need grace. They need forgiveness. I've known people who were homosexuals who became believers and got out of the lifestyle. And everyone who's a believer has gotten out of a lifestyle of sin, Lord. We know that. So in the midst of these things, we want to speak the truth, hard truths, but we want to do it with tender hearts and for concern for the people that are caught in this sin or any other sin, Lord. So bless us to that end. Give us the grace that we need. We're asking in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, would you close with me, we're going to sing a song.