The following is a production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information about the seminary, visit us online at gpts.edu. Okay. First question, just to get us started here. What was behind the American Psychology Association reversing their definition of homosexuality as aberrant? Is there evidence that this was a political slash social decision rather than science? Okay, well, I'm actually not aware of that, so thanks for that information. Look, if I say what I think is behind it, I mean, that would be unfair. I don't know. I wouldn't presume motive. But what I have experienced in my home country of Australia and other countries in similar situations is a reversal. Statistics are very nebulous things, I've discovered. You can make statistics read anything you want. For example, I said that we have a tremendous body of research to show, for example, that children brought up in same-sex marriage or relationships or households, I should say, have higher rates of dysfunction. But only about a month ago, there was another report that came out that said, no, they're quite normal and they're just like people, children raised in heterosexual marriages. But you've got to look beneath the surface at a very, very selective sample group. So often researchers, you'll find, will discard evidence that does not fit with their particular view. We find this in the sciences, not just in this area, but in the sciences all the time. As a creationist, we're told the weight of evidence is against us. I know geologists who will say, look, the geologic column, if you know what I'm talking about, that stereotypical iconic picture we see in textbooks that has simple organisms at the bottom to more complex at the top. As creationists, we would say, just simply saying here, we believe that that is a general order. It's probably an order of burial from the flood because the fountains of the great deep broke open and ocean creatures or creatures that lived on the ocean floor would have been buried first. But how is all that recorded? Well, there's something called the paleontological database. So researchers go all around the world, and when they find evidence that fits and reinforces what they already believe, they report it. But so much, we're aware, of data and out-of-order things that are found are obviously not recorded. And why? Because someone's tenure would be up for grabs, I think, if you bucked the norm or the convention. So even in science, there are lots of reasons why people ignore or choose not to use particular data. I mentioned or alluded to the Kinsey study. We now know that was totally loaded, yet I think a couple of years ago or there was a movie kind of celebrating him. I didn't picture him as a very, very upright moral person, but the kind of movie I think really endorsed their findings, and yet their findings, to be honest, were completely bogus. So I wouldn't want to presume motive on that particular one because I don't know about it, but I've certainly got enough experience being involved in ministry for 25 years and in lots of areas of science, figures can be used to, you know, draw any conclusion or draw the conclusion that you want to some extent. If I might follow up on that, what the question is referring to, there's a manual for psychologists and psychiatrists called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It's got a fuller title, but it's put out by the American Psychological Association. And when they went from the 4th edition to the 5th edition, all of the editions up through the 4th listed homosexuality as an aberrant behavior, but the change from the 4th to the 5th was to make a change in that status. And if you just Google DSM-IV, DSM-V, what you're going to find is that there was a lot of discussion in the psychological community about that. And many psychologists convinced that it was motivated more out of political concern than it was out of any real change in the scientific data. All right. As I advertised this conference on social media, I was told, this is offensive to those of us who are open in our sexuality. Is there a way that we as Christians can respond to that in a way that we don't sound like the bad people so closed in our sexuality? that's an emotional argument, isn't it? And as I said, we can be made, we can be marginalized and made to feel guilty or unloving and I would suggest that again, we get back to what the Bible says. First say, not trying to be unloving, not trying to be bigoted or I'm not trying to offend but I have as much right to my beliefs as you do and what are my beliefs founded on? Well, they're founded on the Bible and the Bible expressing God as Creator explicitly lists this behavior as being sinful. That's the basis of my arbitrary view, if you want to call it that. You know, and I mentioned that situation in the UK where I was confronted, I didn't know, two homosexual activists in the audience. I answered, because I'm always wary, but I answered from what the Bible says. That's how I answer it. At the end of the day they have a choice to accept what the Bible says about it or not. Now if for example if you said well the Bible says such and such and such and such and you used one of those clobber passages and maybe they came up with you know the sin of Sodom as being a you know a breach of the hospitality conventions or something like that you could answer it. Or what most typically happens every time you refer to the Bible says things like yeah but the Bible says God created the world in 624 hour days for example sure you don't believe that. This exactly happened, in fact, on a radio show some years ago in Australia. The Archbishop of Sydney, the Anglican Diocese at the time, was a theistic evolutionist, that's what they taught in their college, and he was on radio debating a civil libertarian, and the Archbishop said, my basis for saying that we should affirm, you know, heterosexual marriage is what the Bible says, and exactly that the civil libertarian turned around and said yes but the bible says God created in 624 hour days and if I read it straight forward obviously it's only a few thousand years ago surely you don't believe that and the archbishop said well no I don't Boom. It's over. It's over. So he just shot himself in the foot. And as I said, when questions lead to other questions, you can then deal with all these objections on a whole range of areas about what the Bible says about the authority of Scripture. You'll find, I believe, if you point back to the Bible on this issue, they just won't deal with homosexual arguments and the Bible. it'll bring in a whole range of stuff that you can then provide evidence for to show that the Bible really is the words of God, and it's an accurate representation of history, and that God is creator. And ultimately, that's where the rubber hits the road. If God is creator, he sets the rules. All right, that's all the questions that I have. Are there any from the floor? Yes, Patty. When people are looking to find themselves and they think they should be somebody else and they go through these operations, surely they're ignorant at the time and even after because they can't change the DNA. So they can change the case, but you can't change the cause. So nothing really can change. They don't have the power to change, right? Well, that's right. But a lot of same-sex people don't undergo gender reassignment. they might enhance their features, but for all intents and purposes, they might still possess male organisms, but just prefer to be treated as a female, for example. And it is absolutely bizarre. But there's a lot of confusion and there's some actually, there's an article on our site who's written by a medical doctor who's dealt with several cases. She's a born again Christian and she has a, you know, an interesting perspective on it. And she believes that it's a psychological issue, specifically. You know, unlike the homosexual debate, which I think, to be honest, is more about lust and sex, which the Bible basically says it is, that in the case of transgenders, she sees it in many respects as a psychological or mental illness with some people. Because you're right, you don't change, you can't change what you are, what you're born like. It's just illogical. But you appease somebody by treating somebody who was born a male and you continue to treat them as a female, where it's getting really out of out of balance is, of course, we've had situations, I think, in the UK where teens who are transgender, you know, boys, you know, being allowed to use female bathrooms and all sorts of stuff. I mean, you know, as I said, it's a line in the sand issue and this is just opening it up for all sorts of things. You know, we're in the generation of change and I just shudder to think what it will be like in the future for future generations once all of this is just so openly accepted, you know? Mr. Stevenson? Those are the language games that you get into. And that's why, for example, when people say... I always say that gender is a grammatical term, sex is a biological term. And what the homosexual lobby has done is that they have turned gender into a biological term. And having done so then, they have identified a number of different genders, heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, transgender, questioning, bisexual, all of those are identified as genders. The problem is, as Mr. Cook's question points out, no, there aren't multiple genders. There are two sexes. And so what has happened is, You know, you were saying earlier at the beginning of your lecture that in a certain sense we don't want to get hung up on words. And I agree with that. But in another sense, this is where the homosexual lobby has in a certain sense won the day because they have defined the terms. And once they define the terms, You know, once the terms are defined, often the mere definition of terms tells you who's going to win the argument. And once you've allowed them to say there are more than two genders, you've lost the argument. It's a very good answer. I'd agree with that. In fact, we have an expression in the ministry, he who defines the terms plays the game. So, you know, verbal confusion. I just want to make one point. The only thing I said about words was not on an issue like that. It was to do with gay marriage. I was interviewed on the radio a few weeks ago on this subject and the DJ said, look, I just don't like calling it gay marriage. Can we call it something else? I said, no, I agree with you. But that's what they call it. Let's look at what you define as gay marriage and then see whether it works or not. But we see that in a number of areas, too. It's like the abortion debate. They no longer want to use terms like embryo or even fetus. And they'll give it some scientific term to make it sound more like an animal or just basically a lump of flesh while it's still in the womb. So that also happens in a number of areas, too. All right, as science develops and technology advances to the level of changing DNA within cells, i.e. genetic engineering, if a parent wanted a boy and conceived a girl and therefore chose to use genetic engineering to change the fetus and DNA to make the child a boy, would that boy be sinning to be attracted to other boys? Summarily, at what level is our gender decided? Well, that's a really wonderful hypothetical argument and I always try to avoid hypothetical arguments because I can get you in a lot of trouble. I don't think it's going to happen. I mean, I just don't believe that you can alter. I mean, as I said, we are still finding out so much. about DNA, you can't alter DNA at will. In fact, we've got a documentary out there called Evolution's Achilles Heels. A microbiologist from Finland, he said, you know, 20, 30 years ago, we thought we'd be able to alter the DNA at will. It's beyond that. The DNA resists change. That's what happens. So respectfully, you can kind of argue hypothetically about that. I don't think it's going to happen. And to be honest, if it could, I'm not entirely sure what the answer necessarily would be. But I think what we see in nature is there's always limits to change. You know, so I'm not arguing from silence here. When we look at dogs, there are always limits to how much you can change an organism. You can have great danes and you can have chihuahuas, but at the end of the day, they're always dogs, and they're always male and female dogs, for example. And it's going to be the same with humans. What I see happening, which was disturbing and saw on TV recently, that one family had bought into the argument about gender so much that they decided they were going to raise their son with neutral clothes. You know, he's a boy, we're not going to give him blue blue clothes, you know, blue equals boy, et cetera, because they wanted to try to raise him genderless until he was at an age where he could decide his gender for himself. I mean, you know, obviously, absolute nonsense, but at the end of the day, he's still born a boy. Doesn't matter what they say, and that's what our DNA determines. I don't believe we're ever going to have the capacity to change it because it's just too complex to change. The sad fact is they may well try things in the future and kill millions of unborn babies in the process. Now when we talked about genetics I mentioned for example Dr John Sanford who's a geneticist and I said they can modify corn to produce greater yields and so on and so forth. There's an important distinction here. dominion mandate that I mentioned in Genesis 128, God has, if you like, kind of made us the top of the food chain. Creation is given for our benefit. If we could produce a strain of wheat by modifying its genes somehow so that it would proliferate in harsh, dry environments like Central Africa and we could feed millions of people, that would be a good thing and we'd be reversing the effects of the curse. But the limit is to nature, it doesn't apply to human beings because we are made in the image of God. And I've got another booklet out there called, Is Human Life Special? Because this argument is, is now saying that we're evolved animals, that all sorts of genetic experimentation should be occurring on humans. And Richard Dawkins, who you've probably heard of, former Oxford professor, the high priest of Darwinian evolution, just recently got himself into trouble on his own Twitter account, because he was saying that, you know, people who, women who have Down syndrome children, you know, were diagnosed while still in the womb, should abort those children because they're going to be a burden on the family, on society, it's going to be more expensive to raise them, and even his evolutionist colleagues came out and condemned him. So we've seen these artificial scenarios, if you like, applied to humans and the concept of even tinkering with human DNA to do these things again appeals back to I believe an evolutionary foundation where it says we can do that we're just evolved animals if we can do it with corn and wheat why can't we do it with human beings and again that's where we have to draw the distinction as Christians that we are different from the animals. Yes sir. The legal brief that you cited relative to the... Oh, the percentage of the gay community? Yeah, it's in a footnote in the booklet out there, so you can actually grab it out there. I can't remember it off the top of my head, I'm sorry. I think it was Texas, but could be wrong. All right, no one's asked me a question about creation evolution, which is really interesting, so just on this particular subject. I think you've got a crowd full of six-day creation people. You'd be surprised. Anyway, okay. Okay, all right, well, let's, the dinner serves at five. And so line up in the hallway, as you are directed, if you have tickets for dinner. And then we reconvene at 7. Ian Hamilton will be preaching this evening. But let's close this session. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the truth of your word. We pray that we might trust it against all assaults, knowing that in a fallen race committed to the destruction of your authority over us, that those assaults will be many and unending. And so we pray for grace and strength for our faith. We pray your blessing upon the meal this evening, that as we eat and fellowship with one another, we might encourage one another in Christ. And we pray for Mr. Hamilton as he would come and open your word to us this evening, that we might indeed benefit from your word. For we ask in Jesus' name, amen.