"Homophobia"

by Phil Johnson



ne of the most effective tactics in the campaign to gain society's silent acquiescence to the homosexual agenda has been the use of the epithet homophobic against anyone who still believes homosexual behavior is immoral or aberrant.

That's a misnomer, of course, deliberately employed to give homosexuality an aura of normality while smearing the stigma of mental disorder on a moral standard that was virtually universal for centuries—until the tide began to turn about forty or fifty years ago.

The suffix -phobia signifies abnormal or irrational fear. But most who oppose homosexuality on moral or biblical grounds are no more driven by "fear" than those who despise pride, sloth, avarice, and adultery on similar grounds.

Yet as the rhetoric of the homosexual lobby becomes more strident and the militancy of their political activities escalates, evangelicals may in fact have good and prudent reasons to be concerned or apprehensive about what may be coming.



For one thing, practically all the arguments that have been set forth in favor of legitimizing homosexuality can be applied with equal effectiveness by advocates for any kind of perversion involving consensual partners, inanimate objects, animals, or whatever. Fair warning: Please don't let your imagination or curiosity run with this—but anyone who regularly counsels people struggling with seared or troubled consciences knows that our culture has fostered many fetishes and perversions too bizarre and too wicked even to mention in polite company (Ephesians 5:12). But if the arguments in favor of normalizing homosexuality are valid, then every kind of sexual debauchery (from pederasty to necrophilia and beyond) will ultimately be able to campaign for acceptance on those same grounds. (Actually, that process is already well underway.)

In other words, the trajectory of the so-called Gay Rights movement is clearing the way for the complete unravelling of all moral standards. If you doubt that, consider (again: with the utmost caution) the annual celebrations of "Gay Pride." These are increasingly hostile, in-your-face, unbridled attacks on whatever remnants of decency may be left in our culture.

But more ominous by far is a stack of pending legislation that in effect will make all opposition to homosexual behavior a hate crime. Such laws have already effectively silenced most biblical teaching on the subject via the airwaves or in public venues in England and Canada. Now strict legislation has been proposed in Brazil that could potentially make it a criminal offense merely to state one's opinion that homosexual behavior is sinful.

Some Christians in Brazil recently issued a manifesto on the issue, and it's worth reading. I was alerted to this by a couple of Brazilian friends—one whose father teaches in a Christian university in Brazil. My friend's father and his colleagues have been harassed, threatened with lawsuits, and showered with the vilest kinds of threats and insults.

So please keep our brothers and sisters in Brazil in your prayers—and be aware that it is most likely only a matter of time before some guardian of political correctness will attempt to make Christianity a thought-crime or hate-crime wherever you live, too. We all need to be prepared for that when it comes, and remember that the apostle Paul counted it a high privilege to suffer for Christ's sake by being imprisoned and finally put to death for his faith.

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An important postscript about Westboro Baptist Church and their ilk It is unfortunate that in the media (and thus in the minds of many non-Christians) the Fred Phelps family have become the representative face of religious opposition to homosexuality. For the record, they are not Christians at all. They are gospel-corrupters who have exchanged the gospel of Jesus Christ for a twisted message of fierce, ungodly hatred. The true gospel is good news about forgiveness and cleansing from every kind of sin—from homosexuality and heterosexual fornication to white-collar sins such as greed and fraud (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). But the Westboro Baptist heretics have exchanged the gospel for a graceless, hopeless harangue that is an embarrassment and an affront to true Christians—and a gross insult to both the Person and the work of Christ. Such gospel-twisting is expressly condemned in Scripture as the profoundest kind of blasphemy, a desecration of the Name of Christ, and a more horrific crime against God than any sexual perversion. See Galatians 1:7-8; 2 John 7-11. Sadly, even some evangelicals who should know better sometimes allow the gospel message to be drowned out or buried under angry and insulting rhetoric, some political agenda, or our own carnal hypocrisy. I've witnessed this tendency, for example, on my own Facebook page, where on a couple of occasions when the subject has come up, some careless brother or sister will post something purposely demeaning toward people who've been ensnared and enslaved by this sin. Jesus didn't treat the Samaritan woman with that kind of contempt. As a matter of fact, in every incident recorded in Scripture where He encountered people held captive to immorality, He responded with compassion and a proffer of deliverance and forgiveness. He called all people everywhere to repent (Luke 13:5; Acts 17:30), but His righteous indignation—His anger—was reserved for Pharisees, gospel-corrupters, and other religious miscreants. We ought to follow His example. Also, be aware when you post comments on my blog or my Facebook page that I have real-life friends who are unbelievers, and all of them are in bondage to some sin or another. Please don't be a bad testimony to them by deliberately treating any class of sinners with deliberate disrespect.