The Homosexual Life-Style—Just How Gay Is It?
Out of the closet and into the headlines. That is the current trend for homosexuality. Books, plays, movies, television programs, and news reports publicize it, usually as an acceptable alternative life-style. But just how acceptable is it? What does it involve? Does it live up to its designation as “gay”? And what about those who resist it? Are they narrow-minded? And God, does he find it acceptable? What does his Word, the Bible, say about it? These are important questions, in view of the propaganda for its acceptance.
IN THE United States, books and plays about homosexual life are reviewed in the press. A book on lesbian nuns reaches six-figure sales and is reviewed on a popular daytime TV show. New York City’s board of education endorses a high school for homosexuals. The congregation of Riverside Church (nondenominational, 3,000 members) in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, votes “in favor of a policy statement accepting homosexual relationships as part of the concept of Christian family life.”
“Britain is to have its first Gay Olympics,” the London Daily Mail reported. A three-part British documentary “suggests Jesus could have been a homosexual.” In Toronto, Canada, a “homosexual festival kicks off with 2,000 parading downtown,” and it “included an interdenominational church service.” Gay parades, gay churches, gay bookstores, gay bars, gay bathhouses, gay political activists with their gay bills of rights—on and on this self-styled gaiety proliferates within society.
Growing Propaganda for the Gay Life-Style
Those who resist it are the ones who are lectured. In New York City, an avowed homosexual was appointed to the bench of the criminal court. At the time he was sworn in, he “praised himself for his ‘courage’ to be what he is,” then “kissed his male lover and received a standing ovation.” There was some opposition, but the city’s largest newspaper, the Daily News, editorialized that anyone who opposed the appointment of the homosexual judge “is a bigot.”
During November 1985 in their nightly newscasts, two network-owned-and-operated TV stations in New York City, WNBC and WABC, ran special segments on homosexuality—to hop on the homosexual bandwagon, as one reporter indicated. The WNBC series, entitled “If Your Kid Is Gay,” was especially aimed at parental responses to homosexual children. Psychiatrists on the program indicated that in such children this sexual orientation was natural and deep-seated and that parents should not try to change it. ‘Better to have your child happy and homosexual,’ one said, ‘than unhappy and heterosexual.’
The March 1985 issue of Seventeen suggested that if you are troubled by anyone’s being homosexual, you may need to seek counsel “at a local gay community services center.” Its article concluded with a statement by “Reverend” Robert H. Iles: “Whether you love men or love women is, in the final analysis, not as important as the fact that you are able to love.” He equates love with sex and says, Make love, whether homo or hetero.
One British educator lamented that in schools “all sex education programmes are made for heterosexuals . . . not one of them had made a single programme for gay pupils.” He also complained that “most school libraries will only stock romances . . . with heterosexual heroes and heroines—despite the increasing volume of gay fiction.” He pinpointed the cause of prejudice against homosexuals: “The idea that heterosexuality is superior . . . is precisely the attitude at the root of the prejudice.”
Homosexual “Love”
But isn’t heterosexuality superior? Do not the design and natural functions of the bodily parts involved make this obvious? Isn’t male with female the obvious norm, and male with male the obvious perversion? Homosexual “love” involves practices the apostle Paul must have had in mind when he spoke of things “not even [to] be mentioned among you” and “shameful even to relate.” (Ephesians 5:3, 12) Nevertheless, at times he did feel it necessary to allude to those shameful practices at Romans 1:24-27. The present also seems to be such a time. Homosexuality has come storming out of the closet. With a chip on its shoulder, it parades about as an acceptable life-style. But is it? Just what does it involve?
The medical magazine Practical Gastroenterology, in its issue of July/August 1985, detailed for doctors treating homosexuals some of the practices of the gay life-style. It indicates that mutual masturbation is commonly practiced, as are also oral and anal sex. Other unbelievably shocking practices are explicitly detailed in the article.
It shows that homosexuality can descend into sadomasochism, the joy of degrading and being degraded. For true Christians this life-style is totally unacceptable. The insidious propaganda now flooding out on its behalf must be shunned like the plague it is.
The Gay Harvest
Such flagrant abuses are not practiced with impunity. As people sow, they reap. Practical Gastroenterology ran a series of articles on diseases caused by homosexuality. Hepatitis simplex, liver infections, gonorrhea, syphilis, parasitic infections, small-bowel lymphoma, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and, of course, the dreadful AIDS—these are just a few of the diseases considered in its issues of July/August and September/October 1985.
New research convicts AIDS of damaging the brain and the spinal cord. The science section of The New York Times, October 15, 1985, reports: “Some of these patients show clear signs of dementia, including memory loss, inability to plan or make decisions, and a remarkable indifference to everything. Others develop partial paralysis, loss of muscle coordination or even worse problems in control of their bodies . . . Some of the brains of AIDS victims are shrunken. Their interior spaces, called the ventricles, are dilated and parts of the all-important cerebral cortex appear shriveled . . . Even if treatments can be devised to halt a virus infection and allow the immune defense system to rebuild itself, brain damage is likely to be permanent.”
AIDS, currently incurable, cases more than doubling yearly, always fatal, and spreading worldwide. Principally afflicts homosexuals, but also intravenous drug users and recipients of blood transfusions or blood products. Also babies born to virus-infected mothers. Spread by bodily fluids, the virus is found in blood, sperm, urine, saliva, and tears. It has a long incubation period. Many years may separate exposure to the virus and the outbreak of AIDS, making early diagnosis impossible. The virus lies within, a time bomb waiting to explode—but who knows when?
It is now exploding worldwide. More than a million people—some say nearly two million—in the United States are estimated to have been exposed to the AIDS virus. More than 14,500 cases since 1981, over 7,000 of whom have died. The number of cases is escalating throughout the world—Europe, Asia, Australia, Caribbean countries, nearly 20 African nations, and 15 countries in the Americas. Last year the number of nations reporting cases of AIDS to the World Health Organization in Geneva jumped from 40 in August to 71 in October, with the case count at that time nearing 17,000.
A Life-Style Unacceptable to Jehovah
Homosexuality is not an alternative life-style acceptable to Jehovah God. Frequently, both gay and liberal preachers twist the scriptures in futile endeavors to make it seem that it is. (2 Peter 3:16) Thousands of years ago Jehovah destroyed Sodom because most of the males of that city practiced it. (Genesis 19:4-25) Centuries later the apostle Peter likened men who copied those Sodomites to “unreasoning animals born naturally to be caught and destroyed.”—2 Peter 2:6-13.
In unmistakable language, both male homosexuality and lesbianism are condemned by the inspired apostle Paul: “God gave them up to disgraceful sexual appetites, for both their females changed the natural use of themselves into one contrary to nature; and likewise even the males left the natural use of the female and became violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males, working what is obscene and receiving in themselves the full recompense, which was due for their error.”—Romans 1:26, 27.
Paul also wrote: “Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men, nor thieves, nor greedy persons, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit God’s kingdom.” (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10) Other Bible translations render the expression “men who lie with men” in various ways, as follows: sodomites, perverts, sexual perverts, homosexual perverts, homosexual perversion, and just plain homosexuals.
A Happy Life-Style Without End
There is nothing gay about the gay harvest. It can be avoided by listening to Jehovah: “I, Jehovah, am your God, the One teaching you to benefit yourself, the One causing you to tread in the way in which you should walk. O if only you would actually pay attention to my commandments! Then your peace would become just like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”—Isaiah 48:17, 18.
Some psychiatrists and others, however, say that homosexuality cannot be “cured,” even by religious conversion. Very difficult, perhaps, but not impossible. The apostle Paul showed this when he next said: “And yet that is what some of you were. But you have been washed clean.” (1 Corinthians 6:11) So it was done by early Christians. And it has been done today. It will yet be done by others who turn to Jehovah for help: “For all things I have the strength by virtue of him who imparts power to me.” (Philippians 4:13) Therefore, “strip off the old personality with its practices, and clothe yourselves with the new personality, which through accurate knowledge is being made new according to the image of the One who created it.”—Colossians 3:9, 10.
Jehovah hates what is bad, but he is ready to show mercy to individuals repenting of their wrongdoing. Jehovah’s Witnesses also hate the bad, including their own fleshly imperfections, but they do not hate themselves or other individuals who do the badness. Hate the sin but not the sinner is Jehovah’s precept and also that of his worshipers. The Bible writer Jude says: “Continue showing mercy to others, doing so with fear, while you hate even the inner garment that has been stained by the flesh.”—Jude 23; see also Psalm 97:10, Matthew 5:43-48, and Romans 7:15-25.
As the apostle Paul wrote at Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But all sinners, including homosexuals, who take in accurate Bible knowledge and act upon it will reap benefits now and gain eternal life in a paradise earth.—Psalm 37:10, 11, 29; Matthew 6:10; John 17:3; Revelation 21:3-5.
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Homosexuality has come storming out of the closet. Those who resist it are the ones lectured
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“God gave them up to disgraceful sexual appetites . . . males with males, working what is obscene.”—Romans 1:26, 27