Does the Bible Condemn Homosexuality? with Keith Gibson (Part 2)

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring T.A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for joining us. In today’s program, Tom concludes a two-part series with guest, pastor and author Keith Gibson. Here’s TBC executive director Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. Our guest is Keith Gibson, and the topic has been homosexuality. Keith is a pastor, and he’s the author of a terrific book called Wandering Stars: Contending for the Faith with the New Apostles and Prophets. You can check our archives—we did a program on that with Keith. But now the issue is homosexuality, but the concern is for young people and their confusion; their lack of maybe understanding what the Bible says clearly; their having to deal with their peer group of nonbelievers as well as believers as to where they stand on this issue, which is being promoted as an alternate lifestyle; and as we mentioned last week, it comes down to their concern about being regarded as judgmental or intolerant.

Keith, welcome back to Search the Scriptures 24/7.

Keith: Thanks, Tom. It’s great to be back with you.

Tom: Now, Keith, again, some people may have missed our first program, which we encourage you to go back and play it at your leisure. That’s why we have it archived. But let’s go over some of the things that we mentioned last week with regard to the research that we pointed out, and some of the other points that we made. Could you give our listeners maybe a brief recap?

Keith: Sure. Last week, Tom, we were talking about, first off, that there is a full-scale frontal assault on the believing community with regard to what the Scriptures say about homosexuality, and especially our young people from the media, education system, the political system. And so everything is designed and very purposeful to change their attitude, and to convince them that the Scriptures are wrong in this area. And so, you know, we talked about that, and that this is an area where the battle is clearly raging. 

But for the Christian, the Bible is our final authority, and the Bible is absolutely unambiguous about this issue: that homosexuality is contrary to God’s design, and it’s dishonoring to him. It is, in fact, sin, and separates a person from Christ. And so with the Bible being our authority, there’s just simply no option for the believers to how we must view homosexuality. I should state also not only is the Bible clear in that regard, but there’s not one positive reference to homosexuality in the entire Word of God, and I think that says something.

We talked about the fact that the purpose of our bodies is clearly seen in their design, and we have a reproductive system for a reason, and that is to reproduce, and that no homosexual relationship can do that. 

And then last week, we did deal with beginning to transition into the fact that all of the evidence is in our favor, and one piece of that puzzle is that homosexuality is incredibly destructive, and it shortens a person’s lifespan significantly. It exposes them to a large variety of diseases—sexually-transmitted diseases and other types of diseases—and so it is not only spiritually harmful, which is by far the most serious, but it is also devastating to them physically, emotionally, psychologically, in every way.

Tom: Yeah. I want to read Romans 1—you read it last week, but I’m going to pick up with v. 24. This is Romans:1:24-28 [24] Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. [26] For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: [27] And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. [28] And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
See All...: “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts…” So this is about sex; this is about sexuality, immorality. “…the lusts of their own hearts to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 

“For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use [the natural use] into that which is against nature…” We underscored that last week, Keith. “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient….” But in the King James, it says convenient, but it means “not fitting.” It’s out of sorts with nature, right?

Keith: That’s right. Absolutely.

Tom: But the other thing that we mentioned, which is important here to reiterate, is 1 Corinthians:6:9Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
See All... says: “Know ye not that the unrighteous,” it’s not just talking about homosexuals here, as you will hear, “that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators,” it’s not talking about just homosexual sin, it’s talking about heterosexual sin, “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind….” I think the New King James says “sodomites.” 

Keith: Right.

Tom: So again, this is sin: heterosexual sin, homosexual sin. “The wages of sin is death,” separation from God forever. But as we mentioned toward the end of the program last week, as you articulated, whatever the sin might be, Christ has paid the full penalty for it.

Keith: That’s right, and if you look at v. 11 of that same passage, it says, “And such were some of you.” And so a person in any of these sins can be forgiven and can be made free in Christ. Homosexuality does not have to define someone and should not define someone, and so the gospel is powerful to set a person free, and that’s why, you know, really we need to point people to the cross.

Tom: Keith, in trying to get some young people to think about how irrational homosexuality is as a lifestyle, which is the propaganda, which is the promotion… As much as I’ve read about this from the perspective of the homosexual agenda and community, they say, “Look, we’re not trying to get the world to accept homosexuality, we just want them to be indifferent about it.” In other words, kind of, “Yeah, well, what’s good for you—your truth is your truth, but our truth is our truth,” and so on. They believe if they can just achieve that, they win the war of words, at least.

Now, one other aspect which I’d like you to address is, you know, going back to the Kinsey Report, the number of homosexuals—lesbian, gay, all the other transgender, bisexual, and so on—is 10 percent. Is that the case?

Keith: No, it’s more like 2-3 percent, although I will say that with our—as our society continues to drift from God, and we continue to reject what is true about God, we may see those numbers increase as a judgment. But no, it’s more like 2-3 percent. The studies differ, but you’re in that ballpark.

Tom: Yeah. You know, as I also mentioned last week, there’s a comparison here with creation/evolution. As we talked about the medical research dealing with this, we can see the evidence, the factual evidence, against homosexuality is very clear. It’s laid out in—you can’t argue; you may not like it—some out there may not like it—but these are the facts, folks.

Now, but there’s another aspect, Keith, about this: we mentioned last week that two men—we read it in the Scriptures that this is against nature, so two men cannot create a baby; two women cannot create a baby. So from a standpoint of nature and humanity, it’s all over for us. If we can’t reproduce because this has become a lifestyle, so-called, that they want to encourage, it’s undermining the survival of man.

Now, here’s the other point: it also runs against evolution, doesn’t it, Keith?

Keith: Well, right. If evolution is the survival of the fittest and that every organism is driven by nature to reproduce itself and leave its genetic mark, and so those that are more efficient at reproducing themselves is what will be transferred on to the next generation, then clearly evolution—if all of that were true, clearly evolution then has voted against homosexuality, because you can’t reproduce, simply. I mean, it simply is impossible.

Tom: I mentioned—I used the term “propaganda,” and I’m not going to back away from that, because as I read the perspective from the, again, homosexual community, they lay stuff out. They put things out there that just can’t be supported, and it gets to be progressive. For example, we’ve heard the term the LGBT—that would be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, and so on. And now it’s—well, then it progressed to, according to their term, their definition, LGBTQ, which they added the term “queer.” Now, I’m not throwing that out, that’s their term. But now it’s LGBTQQ—Keith, what’s that extra Q there for?

Keith: Well, the extra Q is for those who are questioning, who are not convinced of their own gender—sometimes called gender-fluid—and there’s all kinds of other terms. And I think just the multiplication of terms alone ought to indicate to us how confusing this whole idea is with regard to gender once you abandon biblical norms, that we can’t determine what anybody is anymore. And if we have time, perhaps we can even get into some of the social ramifications of that later on.

Tom: Sure. But again, this is, as I said, this is a propaganda; this is pushing some ideas that, you know, I think are…well, where do they go with it? For example, so we have LGBTQQ, but now within the context of the homosexual community, you have some things—man-boy love. You have issues that we would say are perversion to the max, but how do you say, “Oh, no, no, it’s…” In this day and age when the media’s freaked out by abusing children, now you have organizations that are in it just for that, although they would say this is a sexual lifestyle.

Keith: Right, I think, again, once you abandon a concrete, objective standard for what morality is, then you really have no basis for condemning anything. Everybody can play the card of “This is just how I am. This is how I was born.” And so, you know, really, truly, what basis is there for condemning incest? What basis is there for condemning pedophilia? And the men who are a part of NAMBLA, North American Man Boy Love Association, would say that there are children who need this relationship. They’re doing these children a good thing by providing this for them, and so it opens a floodgate to all sorts of sexual perversion.

And I love the fact that you use the word “propaganda,” because it absolutely is propaganda. The idea that this is how people are born, all of the scientific evidence contradicts that. That is nothing but propaganda. The presentation of homosexual relationships on the media that mirror heterosexual relationships as though they are all monogamous, which is just a myth. The idea that your sexual orientation is fixed and unchangeable, again, completely myth. 

And then the presentation of Christians as haters and homophobes when Westboro Baptist Church was in its heyday—I mean, think about this for a second: A congregation of no more than 39 people—all of whom are, for the most part, all of whom are related—the fact that they were interviewed by CNN, and Nightline, and all these other places, what does that tell you? They were a gift to the media. They were exactly what the media wanted to show as Christians. 

And so there has been since the mid-1980s a very purposeful campaign that was laid out in publications like The Guide in an article called “The Overhauling of Straight America,” or in books like After the Ball, and both of these are homosexual publications. And there was a very purposeful agenda that was laid out with regard to how to influence the thinking of the average American, and they’ve just been following the script to a T. 

Tom: Mm-hmm. Keith, along that line, trying to compare the issue, which—again, coming from the homosexual agenda—that this is a race issue. Address that.

Keith: Yeah, and I think that is very important, because to me this is one of their strongest cards: if they can make the issue of homosexuality a civil rights issue, then if you’re in opposition, you look like the Ku Klux Klan, and nobody wants to be there. 

Tom: Sure. Intimidating.

Keith: Absolutely, but the fact is it’s just not true, and the evidence is that it’s not true is the studies that’s been done in identical twins. And I think this is absolutely fascinating: There have been at least seven studies done of identical twins to evaluate the correlation—if one of them is gay, what is the likelihood that the other will also be homosexual? Now, remember that identical twins have identical DNA. That’s how they get the term “identical twins”—it’s not just that they look a lot alike, they have identical DNA. And yet in every study—the Bailey Study, which was done in 2000—the correlation among men…if one man was homosexual, the correlation that his twin brother, identical twin brother, would also be homosexual was only found to be 11 percent. In women, it was 14 percent, and that’s the most generous study. Bearman and Bruckner did a study in 2002, and it only found 7.7 percent correlation in males, and 5.3 percent correlation in females, and there have been at least five other studies since then that have shown similar results, and you can find these in a book called My Genes Made Me Do It. It’s an excellent, excellent resource that addresses this issue. 

So if there’s a less-than-85 percent—I mean, if 85 percent of the time when one twin is gay the other one is not, then we can’t say that it’s genetic, and it can’t be that they were born this way. Whatever else is true, it’s not that. 

And so this isn’t something like race, you know, that is an unchangeable feature of the person. Secondly, race is immaterial with regard to what it means to be a man, to be a woman, and to have a marriage and produce a child. Homosexuality is not, as we’ve been talking about. Homosexuals cannot reproduce in that relationship. That’s not true of something like race. So to say that this is like opposing interracial marriage is simply false. An interracial couple can marry, they form a complimentary relationship emotionally and physically, and they can absolutely bring forth life. That can never be said about a homosexual relationship.

Tom: Right, and again, folks, the issue is sexual immorality. This has to do with sex. It’s not whether you grew up Irish or English, whatever it might be, and we have to understand that.

Now, Keith, so this is the physical side, okay, that we’ve been addressing, the myth related to race. Now let’s move to the psychological side. I talk a lot about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is basically the bible of how your psychiatrist, your clinical psychologist—that’s how they get paid. There are all kinds of issues. 

Back in—I  think it was 1951, there were 104 so-called “mental disorders.” But along the line, at one point when the American Psychiatric Association was deciding—through a vote, by the way, folks—of what would be listed as a mental disorder (I think it was in 1973 when they were meeting to decide what was going to go into the DSM), the Homosexual Task Force, the Gay Task Force, pressured these psychologists, psychiatrists, to remove homosexuality, which was considered a mental disorder. They pressured them to remove it—on what? On the basis of a vote. They were threatened when this group met to shut down the power to the hotel they were in, all kinds of things. Well, guess what? So it came back that they actually removed it due to pressure, and the vote came out to just take it out as a deviant, abnormal behavior and turn it over to being a sexual preference. That’s not science, is it, Keith?

Keith: Well, no, it’s not. And I think what it shows is how intent this movement is on having homosexuality accepted as being morally equivalent to heterosexuality. And, you know, we should be quick to state that while the Bible would affirm and we would affirm the equality of persons, equality of persons does not translate into equality of lifestyle choices. And so they’re not the same, and they don’t produce the same results. But that’s what, you know, we’re looking for, or that’s what this agenda is about is absolute acceptance. 

And, you know, we’ve moved from where homosexuality—we used to call it sodomy, and it referred to an act. We’ve moved from that to, as you stated, to homosexuality as a mental disorder, and now to homosexuality as a state of being. And the power of that is that we can oppose an act and declare it to be sinful, but you know you’re expected to be at least a little bit sympathetic to someone who has a disorder, a condition. But nothing short of total acceptance is tolerated for someone’s state of being. And so language matters, and it was always the agenda to have this as equivalent.

And I think another argument against this idea that they are equivalent, or that it is fixed, is the fact that there are so many thousands of testimonies of homosexuals who have been transformed or who have merely chosen to leave the lifestyle. In fact, it’s estimated that about 50 percent of homosexual people gravitate toward heterosexuality as they age, and that’s without conversion and without any form of assistance. And we saw this play out in popular culture just a few years ago with Anne Heche and Ellen Degeneres. Anne left her and went back into a heterosexual lifestyle, which, if we’re to believe the mythology and the propaganda, should be impossible. No one ever got up in the morning and said, “You know what, I don’t want to be caucasian any longer. I’m going to change.” But that does happen with regard to homosexuality, and you’ll never hear that on major news outlets, but it is absolutely the fact.

Tom: Yeah. Now, Keith, we just have a couple minutes left, but what do you recommend, because we’re addressing—the whole point of your book that you’re working on now is to help, to support, to equip young people to deal with these issues. So what do you recommend as a prevention program or an antidote for them to stand up to what they are being told, and in many cases overwhelmed by?

Keith: Yeah, thanks, Tom. I think there’s several things. One is I believe every Christian should have a good defensive scripture. Why do we believe the Bible to be the Word of God? We really should be able to answer that question. I think that’s first and foremost. 

I think a good understanding of the facts. The facts are on our side! It’s not genetic, it’s not unchangeable, it’s not harmless, and we just need to be able to lay that case out, to be familiar with some of the testimonies of changed lives. 

There’s a Ph.D. from Syracuse, Rosario Butterfield, who’s written her testimony. She’s a former lesbian activist. She’s now a believer in Jesus Christ, and she’s married to a pastor, and she’s the mother of multiple children. We need to be familiar with some of these stories, because our culture unfortunately thinks emotionally rather than logically, and so I think having testimonies in our back pocket, and there are many. 

But then as a church, we need to do a better job of prizing marriage, because we are forfeiting our moral authority to say to anybody that their behavior is destructive as long as we continue to destroy the family the way we are within the body of Christ through divorce. And so I really believe that as a church, we need to come back to what God’s design is for marriage, and then we can talk about what God’s design is for sexuality.

Tom: Well, my guest has been Keith Gibson. Keith, you know, I hope our listeners will pray about this, will go to the Lord in terms of where they are, or what they can do, how they can especially encourage our young people to stand fast on the Word of God. And I appreciate your input, Keith. Thank you so much for being on Search the Scriptures 24/7.

Keith: Thanks, Tom. I appreciate the invitation. 

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7 featuring T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. We offer a wide variety of resources to help you in your study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019 Bend, Oregon 97708. Call us at 800-937-6638, or visit our website at thebereancall.org. I’m Gary Carmichael. We’re glad you could tune in, and we hope you can join us again next week. Until then, we encourage you to Search the Scriptures 24/7.