The Assault on the Family

January 1, 2004 - Neither Greece nor Rome ever legalized it. No western civilization prior to our generation has ever sanctioned it. But in November, four judges in a Massachusetts court decided that thousands of years of collective wisdom were wrong and that homosexual couples have a right to marry. They were preceded by Canada and also by Vermont and California, which established homosexual marriage by another name, "civil unions."

by Sandy Rios

It's a day when judges can legislate immorality without accountability, and legislators can be motivated to do the same by deep-pocketed special interest groups.

It's a time when homosexual conduct is sanctioned on a newly discovered right to private sexual conduct ("Lawrence v. Texas"), found in a Constitution written 200 years ago, mostly by Christians.

But while homosexual marriage comes moving like a freight train, homosexual activists are asking hard questions: What about traditional marriage is there to be so proud of?



While once the young virgin, dressed in white, walked down the aisle to be greeted by a man prepared to pledge faithfulness for a lifetime, white dresses are now worn by pregnant brides and by only the occasional virgin, while grooms pledge their love not until death but only until the bride gains weight or shows signs of aging. Adultery is epidemic, divorce rampant—even in the church—and cohabitation is as common as the cold.

Once married, many wives saturate their minds with romance novels and soap operas, filling their thoughts with a non-existent, perfect lover, fantasizing their way through married life and cheating their husbands of intimacy and respect with constant comparisons. Soaps and romance novels could be called the pornography of the American woman.

And what of traditional pornography? A listener to Concerned Women Today wrote recently, broken and repenting of an addiction to Internet pornography. He said he was spending three to four hours a day viewing. He confessed the guilt of cheating his family not only of his love but also of his time. Men preferring fantasy to reality, robbing their wives of intimacy and respect. Sound familiar? Husbands and wives alike—lonely, unfulfilled and robbed of God's best: intimate, faithful, marital sex.

So while we rightfully speak about the wrongness of homosexual marriage, our homosexual friends, neighbors and family members have a right to ask the hard questions.

Homosexual marriage will cause the very underpinnings, moral and legal, of our society to be dismantled. But rampant divorce and adultery have already been doing that for some time.

Why the push for homosexual marriage? So people can legitimize their relationship and feel good about their behavior. What adulterer wouldn't die for the same chance? To be told your immoral behavior is not only your right but that it is discrimination to keep you from it. What man addicted to pornography or woman caught in the web of fantasy wouldn't enjoy the same?

It is human nature to want to justify our ignoble deeds. But the enemy is not content with simple sin. He wants total destruction. Homosexual men die an average of 10 to 20 years earlier than their heterosexual counterparts. Likewise, pornography doesn't visit; it consumes, and many held in its grip eventually act out its perversion. Like most sexual predators, David Westerfield, who molested and murdered little Danielle van Dam in San Diego, was deeply addicted to porn. And some women cling to their own fantasies for years until they erupt in mid-life years, causing them to desert families and destroy their own as well as their children's lives.

"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8, NIV).

What was sin and unnatural and an abomination 4,000 years ago remains so today. All of the laws and declarations and sitcoms and music and news stories promoting homosexuality, adultery or sensuality will never make it less so.

Yet God stands firm and immovable, unshakable on the moral boundaries He Himself fashioned. "Woe to those," He declared, "who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter" (Isaiah 5:20, NIV).

God will not force anyone to obey and acknowledge Him. But we fool ourselves if we think our sins do not have consequences. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23, NIV). The only hope for our generation is the truth of God's Word washing over us and leading to deep repentance. And God, in His mercy, is willing to forgive anyone who comes to Him with a sincere desire to turn away from sin and to follow Christ.

God told Ezekiel to go and speak to a rebellious people—his own—and He said that whether they listened or not, Ezekiel must speak the truth. We, too, must speak the truth—both to the sins of others and to our own. And we must work for laws to hold back evil, because those kinds of laws are teachers, leading people to God.

The assault against marriage and the family is raging. And we must understand that in these difficult days, we are not called to win the cultural battles but to be faithful in the midst of them. We may well lose this battle against homosexuality and immorality, but we are called to put on God's armor and fight. And "after you have done everything," by God's grace, "to stand" (Ephesians 3:11, NIV).