By Peter LaBarbera

As a social conservative, one of the most troubling aspects of this presidential campaign has been the media’s (and John McCain’s) failure to flesh out Barack Obama’s “audacious” doublespeak on the issue of same-sex “marriage.”

Here’s the question Obama was lucky enough to have never been asked in this campaign: What does it mean to say you support traditional marriage (one man, one woman) – when you do so much to advance the pro-“gay marriage” cause, including denouncing state marriage-protection amendments like Prop 8 in California as “discriminatory and divisive”?

Did you know that Obama has promised homosexual activists that he will work to fully repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act? DOMA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996 and protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state “gay marriages.” It was passed overwhelmingly by the Senate, 85-14, with Sen. Biden joining 28 other Democrats in voting yes. How liberal is Obama’s anti-DOMA scheme? Hillary Clinton, a trusted gay ally, pledged to repeal only part of DOMA.

Neither McCain nor Gov. Palin has made an issue of Obama’s extreme anti-DOMA sop to the homosexual crowd even though they had a clear opening. (One 2007 Quinnipiac poll revealed that a homosexual group’s endorsement of a candidate would be a net electoral loser among voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) The result is that Obama’s DOMA Destruction Plan never surfaced in the debates and barely in the major media.

The Democratic spin on marriage has fooled a lot of voters. If you watched the presidential debates, including the Saddleback Church event with Pastor Rick Warren, you might have concluded that Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, pretty much agree with McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin on same-sex “marriage.”

That is a precisely what the savvy strategists at the Obama/Biden campaign want you to think, as they strive to hide their candidates’ radical pro-gay agenda and portray themselves as reasonable moderates on this wedge issue. Truth is, the gulf between the tickets is the difference between saying you support marriage and actually doing something to protect it – and NOT favoring policies like repealing DOMA that are completely in line with the homosexual activists’ goal of radically redefining this sacred institution.

McCain is a strong DOMA supporter who will embrace a Federal Marriage Amendment if he sees activist judges forcing “gay marriage” on the states. Obama, on the other hand, went from supporting DOMA in 2004 to calling it “abhorrent” as part of his radical promise to homosexual groups to overturn it. Obama is setting the stage for nationalizing “same-sex “marriage” (perhaps under the guise of “civil unions”), while reporters dutifully provide him cover by repeating his alleged opposition to same.

If only one major media reporter would ask Sen. Obama: how can you say you support traditional marriage and yet “abhor” a popular law (DOMA) that helps states to preserve it? Alas, we mere mortals have to choose sides – and most politicians flip and then flop — but apparently Obama, The One, is allowed to embrace both sides of an issue simultaneously and get away with it.

Consider the following Obama policies and rhetoric and ask yourself if this sounds like a man who supports traditional marriage:

• Obama congratulated homosexual activists for “getting married” at a San Francisco Democratic gay event;
• Though Obama says he “personally” opposes “gay marriage,” he creates a distinction without a difference by supporting federal “civil unions.” Obama told the nation’s leading homoseuxal lobby group: “I believe civil unions should include the same legal rights that accompany a marriage license.” Interestingly, this stance has led Obama to support a bill to allow homosexual partners to immigrate to the United States just like married spouses;
• Obama promises gay activists that he will use the bully pulpit to advocate for homosexual adoption of children. Thus Americans may have to endure the absurd spectacle of a President Obama using the prestige of the White House to defend placing children in homes that are motherless or fatherless by design;
• Obama said he “respects” the California supreme court’s 4-3 decision earlier this year forcing “gay marriage” on that state, even though it wiped out a previous statewide ballot vote by Californians to preserve marriage as between a man and a woman;
• Obama denounced the Federal Marriage Amendment as a mere “political ploy”;
• Obama dismisses a key passage in the New Testament Book of Romans and distorts Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to justify his pro-homosexuality agenda.

Considering the above, is it asking too much of the media to stop repeating the distortion that Obama and Biden support traditional marriage?

Appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, Sen. Biden eagerly told Ellen, a “gay-marriage” activist, that if he were a California voter he would vote “no” on Prop 8 in California. How strange, since Prop 8 does nothing but reinstate the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. (It does not affect same-sex “domestic partners,” who already receive the same benefits as married couples under California law.) Of course, earlier, in the vice-presidential debate, Biden claimed to oppose gay “marriage” — creating the false impression that he and Palin essentially agree on the same-sex-”marriage” question.

John McCain blew it by not calling out his opponents on their “gay marriage” deception and their plans to do in DOMA. All he needed to say was that the Illinois Senator doesn’t have the guts to tell the truth — that Obama’s “personal” opposition to “gay marriage” is meaningless because his pro-gay pledges would greatly advance the spread of homosexual “marriage” across the land. With friends like Obama and Biden, McCain could have said, the beleaguered institution of marriage really doesn’t need enemies.
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Peter LaBarbera is founder of Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org) and president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality (for identification purposes only).

A Special Report for Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org)

Note: RFFV has excerpted the text in question on pages 222-224 of Barack Obama’s book, The Adacity of Hope, here:  “Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’ Passage Downplays ‘Obscure Line in Romans’ Proscribing Homosexual Sex.” The “obscure line” in the New Testament Book of Romans to which Obama refers is evidently this (all links are to the New International Version of the Bible):

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26-27)

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Barack Obama’s Disturbing Misreading of the Sermon on the Mount as Support for Homosexual Sex

by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
gagnon@pts.edu

October 23, 2008

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has written in The Audacity of Hope—a book that perhaps should have been entitled The Audacity of Portraying Myself Messianically as the Herald of Audacious Hope—that he is not “willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans [about homosexual practice] to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.”[1]  He repeated this line in a campaign appearance in Ohio this past March. He stated that if people find controversial his views on granting the full benefits of marriage to homosexual unions, minus only the name, “then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.”[2]  These remarks by Obama represent a gross distortion of the witness of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

On Romans 1
First, they misrepresent the text in Romans 1:24-27 against all homosexual practice, a text that belongs to one of the two or three most important books in Scripture, a catalyst for frequent spiritual revivals for the past two millennia. Romans 1:24-27 depicts all homosexual practice as an “indecency” and moral “impurity” that does three things. First, it violates God’s male-female standard for valid sexual relations given in Genesis 1:27 (the text contains strong echoes to Genesis 1:26-27). Second, it violates the obvious evidence in the material structures of creation that male and female, not persons of the same sex, are each other’s sexual counterparts or complements (a particularly obvious example on the plane of human interrelationships of suppressing the truth about God and ourselves accessible in creation and nature). Third, it “dishonors” the sexual integrity of the participants who engage in such activity by imaging themselves as only half their own sex in their attempt to merge with an alleged complement of the same sex. The passage is no more “obscure” than Paul’s comments on idolatry in the preceding passage in Romans 1:19-23 or his comments regarding a case of adult-consensual man-stepmother incest at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 5—another instance of prohibited sexual intercourse between persons who are too much alike (here on a familial level, already of the same “flesh”).

On Scripture Generally
Second, Obama’s remarks misrepresent Scripture generally in that they suggest that Paul’s stance on homosexual practice is somehow an oddity within the pages of Scripture. The truth is that a person would be hard-pressed to come up with an example of consensual sexual relations that the witness of Scripture opposes more strongly, consistently, and absolutely. Paul’s remarks were certainly not isolated. Every law, narrative, proverb, poetry, metaphor, teaching, and exhortation in Scripture that has anything to do with sexual relations presupposes a male-female prerequisite. The creation texts in Genesis 1 and 2 both establish such a prerequisite. Genesis 1:27 integrates the creation of “male and female” as a sexual pair with being made in God’s image, suggesting that same-sex pairing would efface that part of the image of God stamped on the sexual self (as also would adultery and incest, the latter even of an adult-consensual sort). Genesis 2:21-24 portrays a male-female sexual bond as the re-merger of the two complementary sexual halves of an integrated sexual whole. In other words, the sexual “counterpart” or “complement” of a man is a woman (and vice versa), a being both “corresponding to him” and “opposite him” (as the Hebrew word kenegdo infers).

On Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount
Third, Obama’s remarks grossly distort the message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). The Sermon on the Mount says nothing at all that intimates either support for homosexual relationships or opposition to the kind of view espoused in Romans 1, a view that would have been held universally by Jews and Christians of the period.

The Sermon as a closing of remaining loopholes in the Law of Moses
Following the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-11), Jesus contends that he has not come to abolish any portion of the law and the prophets but rather has come to tighten its demands and close remaining loopholes (5:17-48). Six “antitheses” are put forward, the gist of which is: You use to be able to get away with the following but I say ‘no longer’ (5:21-48). Two of the six antitheses have to do with sex: adultery of the heart (5:27-28), which extends God’s requirement for sexual purity into the interior life, and divorce/remarriage (5:31-32). In between them is a warning by Jesus that if your eye or hand threatens your downfall, remove them, for it is better to go into heaven maimed than to be thrown into hell full-bodied (5:29-30). This last statement—along with Jesus’ strong affirmation of “the law and the prophets”—does not fit well with Obama’s view that applying the adage “hate the sin but love the sinner” to homosexual practice is wrong because “such a judgment inflicts pain on good people.”[3]

The two-sexes foundation for Jesus’ view of marital twoness 
The remarks against both divorce and marriage to a divorced person are pertinent to the issue of homosexuality. While we permit both in our society it would be invalid to argue from this to acceptance of homosexual unions; first, because Jesus’ remarks implicitly forbade polygamy, which we continue to reject today; and, secondly, because Jesus regarded a male-female prerequisite for marriage (and thus for any sexual union) as foundational for, and hence more important than, the definition of a valid sexual union as a lifelong commitment between two persons.

What we see in Matthew 5:31-32 is only the outcome of a reasoning that is more fully put forward in Matthew 19:3-9 (which parallels Mark 10:2-12). There Jesus bases his view of marital monogamy (the ‘twoness’ of the sexual bond) and marital indissolubility on two Scripture texts: Genesis 1:27 (“male and female [God] made them”) and Genesis 2:24 (“for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his woman/wife and the two shall become one flesh”). The “cleaving” text in Genesis 2:24 is obviously relevant to Jesus’ remarks about marital permanence, even as it presupposes a male-female prerequisite. But of what relevance is the terse quotation that God “made them male and female”? Apparently Jesus extrapolated from God’s creation of two primary sexes that sexual unions should be limited to two persons, whether serially (no divorce) or concurrently (no polygamy). The twoness of the sexes, their binary or dimorphic character, was for Jesus the foundation for limiting sexual unions to two persons. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for Jesus to have cited Genesis 1:27 and no basis for limiting marriage to two and only two persons.

Confirmation for this interpretation of Jesus’ remarks can be found among the Essene community at Qumran, the Jewish sect whose opposition to polygamy was closest to Jesus’ views. They rejected “taking two wives in their lives” because “the foundation of creation is ‘male and female he created them’ [Genesis 1:27]” and because “those who entered (Noah’s) ark went in two by two into the ark [Genesis 7:9]” (Damascus Document 4.20-5.1). Once the two primary sexes came together in a sexual union a third party was neither needed nor desirable.

What this means is that Jesus thought the male-female paradigm given by God in creation was the foundation for the twin principles of monogamy and lifelong commitment. The foundation is obviously more important, not less so, than any superstructure predicated on the foundation. Since we don’t permit polygamy today, even between three or more persons with a polysexual orientation in a loving relationship of lifelong commitment, there is even less of a basis for permitting homosexual unions. Once the twoness of the sexes is rejected as a basis for extrapolating a monogamy principle, there is no nature-based or logical reason for limiting the number of persons in a sexual union to two persons at any one time.

Jesus and “born eunuchs”: no sex for them
In Matthew 19:10-12 Jesus compared “eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” to “eunuchs who from their mother’s womb were born thus.” The former were people who did not get married, and thus abstained from sexual relations, out of a pragmatic missionary desire to further God’s kingdom (i.e., a single person would have greater freedom of movement and might be more willing to take risks than someone who had a family to worry about). The latter, the “born eunuchs,” were men who did not experience sexual desires for women, whether because they were asexual or, possibly, homosexual. Why does Jesus compare “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” with “born eunuchs”? Answer: Like the “born eunuchs,” the “eunuchs for the kingdom” are not having any sexual relations. If the “born eunuchs” included men attracted only to other men—a reasonable interpretation given the ancient evidence—then Jesus was presuming that men with exclusive homosexual attractions should not be having intercourse with other males. This is consistent with his argument from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 earlier in the same passage (Matthew 19:4-9), where the only link between the two creation texts is the insistence that marriage—and thus all sexual unions since Jesus permitted sexual intercourse only in the context of marriage—be between the two sexes, male and female, man and woman. Those who cannot find sexual satisfaction in such relationships, Jesus believed, were not permitted other forms of sexual relationships, including same-sex sexual activity.

Other indications of Jesus’ embrace of a male-female standard for sexual unions
There are many other arguments to which one can point in order to establish Jesus’ embrace of a male-female prerequisite for valid sexual unions. These include:

• Jesus’ retention of the Law of Moses even on relatively minor matters such as tithing, to say nothing of a foundational law in sexual ethics; and his view of the Old Testament as inviolable Scripture, which Scripture was absolutely opposed to man-male intercourse.
• The fact that the man who baptized Jesus, John the Baptist, was beheaded for defending Levitical sex laws in the case of the adult-incestuous union between Herod Antipas and a woman who was both the ex-wife of his half-brother Philip and the daughter of another half-brother. The rejection of homosexual practice in the same two chapters of Leviticus from which the incest laws stem (18 and 20) is the closest analogue to the incest laws inasmuch as both types of law’s reject sex between persons too much alike in embodied structures, whether in terms of kinship or in terms of gender.
• Early Judaism’s univocal opposition to all homosexual practice—no exceptions anywhere within many centuries of the life of Jesus.
• The early church’s united opposition to all homosexual practice. This completes the historical circle and underscores the absurdity of positing a homosexualist Jesus without analogue in his historical context: cut off from his Scripture, from the rest of early Judaism, from the man who baptized him, and from the church that emerged from his teachings.
• Jesus’ saying about the defiling effect of desires for various forms of sexual immoralities (porneiai, Mark 7:21-23), which distinguished matters of relative moral indifference such as food laws from matters of moral significance such as the sexual commands of his Bible and connected Jesus to the general view of what constitutes the worst forms of porneia in early Judaism (same-sex intercourse, incest, bestiality, adultery).
• Jesus’ affirmation of the Decalogue prohibition of adultery, which in early Judaism was treated as a rubric for the major sex laws of the Old Testament, including, prominently, the laws against homosexual practice.
• Jesus’ saying about Sodom which, understood in the light of Second Temple interpretations of Sodom (Matthew 10:14-15, with parallel text in Luke 10:10-12), included an indictment of Sodom for attempting to dishonor the integrity of the visitors’ masculinity by treating them as if they were the sexual counterparts to males.
• Jesus’ saying about not giving what is “holy” to the “dogs” (Matthew 7:6), an apparent allusion to Deuteronomic law (Deuteronomy 23:17-18) and texts in 1-2 Kings that indict figures known as the qedeshim, self-designated “holy ones” identified as “dogs” in Deuteronomy for their attempt to erase their masculinity by serving as the passive-receptive partners in man-male intercourse.
• The fact that Jesus developed a sex ethic that had distinctive features not shared by the love commandment (love for everyone does not translate into having sex with everyone); reached out to tax collectors and sexual sinners while simultaneously intensifying God’s ethical demand in these areas; insisted that the adulterous woman stop sinning lest something worse happen to her (i.e., loss of eternal life; compare John 8:3-11 with John 5:14); appropriated the context of the “love your neighbor” command in Leviticus 19:18 by insisting on reproof as part of a full-orbed view of love (Luke 17:3-4; compare Leviticus 19:17: you shall reprove your neighbor lest you incur guilt for failing to warn him); and defined discipleship to him as taking up one’s cross, denying oneself, and losing one’s life (Mark 8:34-37; Matthew 10:38-39; Luke 14:27; 17:33; John 12:25).

Conclusion
Obama claims that his advocacy for homosexual unions receiving full marriage benefits is in keeping with Jesus’ own views in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. As an assertion about the Jesus of history or even about the living Christ (assuming significant continuity between the two), this claim is preposterous. It is nothing but a fantasy, a figment of Obama’s imagination imposed on the text of the Sermon. The Sermon does speak about loving one’s enemies (Matthew 5:43-48) and about not judging others over relatively minor matters while ignoring larger problems in one’s own life (7:1-6). However, these themes provide no more support for homosexual unions than they do for loving, committed polyamorous or polygamous unions or for adult-consensual incestuous unions, both of which Jesus obviously opposed. If in the Sermon Jesus warned against men marrying divorced women, even women divorced by their husbands on invalid grounds (i.e., on grounds other than adultery), the idea that Jesus would have opposed “hurting the feelings of gays and lesbians” by not treating such unions as the functional equivalents of a valid marriage represents revisionist history at its worse. Obama’s argument, carried to its logical but absurd conclusion, would force Americans to provide full marital benefits for adult-committed polygamous unions and incestuous unions, since such persons too deserve to have hospital-visitation privileges, health insurance coverage, and all the other benefits of marriage every bit as much (and more so) than homosexual unions.[4]

Obama’s image of Jesus is that of a person who, rather than lovingly calling sinners to repentance so that they might be reclaimed for the kingdom of God that he proclaimed, tells others to stop judging them. This is not the picture of Jesus’ mission to “sinners and tax collectors” in the Gospels. Instead, we find a picture of a Jesus who aggressively reaches out in love to the biggest violators of his ethical demands while simultaneously maintaining that demand; a Jesus who encourages offenders to “go and no longer be sinning” lest something worse happen to them, namely, exclusion from the kingdom of God. Obama does not love more or better than Jesus. That would be carrying a messianic complex a bit too far.

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Endnotes:

1. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Crown, 2006), 222.

2. Cited in: Michael Foust, “Obama: Sermon on the Mount supports gay civil unions,” Baptist Press, March 3, 2008 (online: http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=27532); Sarah Pulliam, “Obama Cites Sermon on the Mount for his Support of Civil Unions,” Christianity Today, Mar. 3, 2008 (online: http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2008/03/obama_cites_ser.html).

3. Audacity of Hope, 222. Obama refers to a woman in a lesbian relationship who was hurt by his not going all the way to endorse “gay marriage”—a silly observation in retrospect since Obama wants to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (which he has called “abhorrent” [see RFFV article at http://republicansforfamilyvalues.com/2008/10/18/obama-calls-defense-of-marriage-act-doma-abhorrent-in-letter-to-chicago-gay-newspaper/] and whose main purpose is to prevent “gay marriage” adopted in one state from being foisted on all other states), strongly opposes California’s Proposition 8 (which merely limits the definition of marriage to a “marriage between a man and a woman”), has stated that he “respects” the California Supreme Court decision foisting “gay marriage” on the state, opposes any federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and strongly endorses granting every single marriage benefit to homosexual unions, not to mention every “sexual orientation” special protections law imaginable. To take such positions is obviously to support the foisting of “gay marriage” across the country. The only reason why Obama doesn’t say that he supports “gay marriage” is because it is not a popular position around the country and would make him look like the extremist that he is on homosexual issues. Yet even in his 2006 book he coyly stated that he wants “to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided” (an unwillingness that, at any rate, is nothing more than political expediency, opportunism, and pragmatism) and that his main reason for not coming out for “gay marriage” is that, “in the absence of any meaningful consensus, the heightened focus on marriage [is] a distraction from other attainable measures to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians” (ibid.). Translation: Obama will come out publicly for “gay marriage” just as soon as feels that he can do so without significant harm to his political aspirations, and not a day later. In the meantime, he will do everything possible to advance the ‘cause’ for “gay marriage” without declaring that he is for “gay marriage” itself.

4. The issues of hospital visitations or health insurance coverage are red herrings. Few hospitals today, if any, reject visitations by a limited circle of very close friends. No law has to be passed here affirming homosexual relationships as marriage equivalents. At most a law could be passed entitling a person in a hospital to name any person of their choosing, within a limited number, as someone entitled to full hospital visitations. The insurance coverage issue is invalid because homosexual unions, which are as immoral as adult-committed incestuous unions and more immoral than heterosexual polygamous unions, should have no greater claim than any close friendships between unrelated persons. Obviously it is not fiscally practical to extend insurance coverage to all one’s close friends. It is not violating any principle in the Sermon on the Mount, in spirit or letter, to take such stances.

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About the author

Robert Gagnon (www.robgagnon.net) is associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice (Abingdon, 2001). The views expressed herein are Dr. Gagnon’s own and do not speak for Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as a whole. Gagnon came to PTS in the Fall of 1994 after a one-year position as Visiting Professor of Religion at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is also an ordained elder at a Presbyterian Church (USA) in Pittsburgh. In addition to being the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001; 520 pgs.), Gagnon is co-author (with Dan O. Via) of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; 125 pgs.); and, as a service to the church, provides a large amount of free material on the web dealing with Scripture and homosexuality. In addition, he has published scholarly articles on biblical studies in Journal of Biblical Literature, New Testament Studies, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Novum Testamentum, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Horizons in Biblical Theology, and The Christian Century.

For a partial curriculum vitae of Dr. Gagnon go HERE. To contact Dr. Gagnon send an e-mail to: gagnon@pts.edu or call 412-441-3304, ext. 2205 or 412-362-5610, ext. 2205. If you would like to be included on his mailing list and notified once a month or so regarding new materials on his website, e-mail Dr. Gagnon with the request. To view his superb website, go to www.robgagnon.net.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26-27)

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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

By Barack Obama; Crown Publishers: 2006

Obama writes on pages 222-224 (emphasis added):

[Following a passage on the lack of compromise on both sides of the abortion debate…]

For many practicing Christians, the same inability to compromise may apply to gay marriage. I find such a position troublesome, particularly in a society in which Christians men and women have been known to engage in adultery or other violations of their faith without civil penalty. All too often I have sat in a church and heard a pastor use gay bashing as a cheap parlor trick—‘It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!’ he will shout, usually when the sermon is not going so well. I believe that American society can choose to carve out a special place for the union of a man and a woman as the unit of child rearing most common to every culture. I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitations or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex—nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.

Perhaps I am sensitive on this issue because I have seen the pain my own carelessness has caused. Before my election [to the United States Senate], in the middle of my debates with Mr. [Alan] Keyes, I received a phone message from one of my strongest supporters. She was a small business owner, a mother, and a thoughtful, generous person. She was also a lesbian who had lived in a monogamous relationship with her partner for the last decade.

She knew when she decided to support me that I was opposed to same-sex marriage, and she had heard me argue that, in the absence of any meaningful consensus, the heightened focus on marriage was a distraction from other attainable measures to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. Her phone message in this instance had been prompted by a radio interview she had heard in which I had referenced my religious traditions in explaining my position on the issue. She told me that she had been hurt by my remarks; she felt that by bringing religion into the equation, I was suggesting that she, and others like her, were somehow bad people.

I felt bad, and told her so in a return call. As I spoke to her I was reminded that no matter how much Christians who oppose homosexuality may claim that they hate the sin but love the sinner, such a judgment inflicts pain on good people — people who are made in the image of God, and who are often truer to Christ’s message than those who condemn them. And I was reminded that it is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided, just as I cannot claim infallibility in my support of abortion rights. I must admit that I may have been infected with society’s prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus’ call to love on another might demand a different conclusion; and that in years hence I may be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history. I don’t believe such doubts make me a bad Christian. I believe they make me human, limited in my understandings of God’s purpose and therefore prone to sin. When I read the Bible, I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelation – whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion.

Obama’s San Francisco Values?  Matt Barber argues that Barack Obama’s pro-homosexual positions — including his call for a full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA, which Joe Biden voted for and which Bill Clinton signed into law) — have far more in common with the radical sexual ethos of the nation’s “queer” Mecca than with the Middle America Obama claims to represent. At left, “Sister Mary [F-cking] Poppins,” one of the male-homosexual-drag-queen mock “nuns” of the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” — a San Francisco-based “charity” group despised by many Catholics but adored by the city’s homosexuals — poses for a photo at the Folsom Street Fair. Folsom is a pornographic, nudity-filled, outdoor sadomasochistic celebration that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the Bay city. Click on photo to enlarge.

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By Matt Barber

If Bill Clinton was the first black president, Barack Obama, if elected, will be the first “gay” president. No, I don’t mean he’ll personally decorate the West Wing, open a bathhouse in the Rose Garden or take up with Barney Frank. I mean he’ll be the most radically pro-homosexual, anti-family president in history. He’s very quietly pledged as much to the homosexual “Human Rights Campaign” and other fawning members of his homofascist fan club.

In the wake of the current economic crisis, neither presidential candidate is talking much about social issues. But in the months and years preceding this election cycle, Obama did plenty of talking. Unfortunately, most people have no idea what he’s said. If the mainstream media would do its job, quit shilling for their ideological messiah and objectively report on Obama’s unwavering fidelity to extremist homosexual pressure groups, many of his unsuspecting supporters might kick him to the curb.

You may have heard the term “San Francisco values” bandied about from time to time. These values do not so much derive from a geographical locale as they do from a shared, deeply engrained “progressive” worldview – a worldview marbled throughout in murky tones of secular humanism and moral relativism. Central to San Francisco values is the notion that the only thing immoral is to believe there are things immoral.

While Barack Obama may hail from Illinois, Hawaii, Kenya or wherever, his set of core principles – his values – discernibly stem from the underbelly of San Francisco’s hyper-sexualized Castro District. The very San Francisco values that brought you the behaviorally driven homosexual AIDS epidemic, San Francisco’s public Folsom Street orgy and the preposterous and oxymoronic notion of “gay marriage” are the same values embraced by both homosexual activists and Obama, the latest politico to make ‘em light in their loafers.

Still, don’t take my word for it. Obama’s own words betray his veiled extremism. Despite a series of utterly hollow and politically expedient platitudes to the contrary, the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that Barack Obama fully endorses the postmodern concept of “same-sex marriage.” He’s promised homosexual activists – in hushed tones – that if elected, he’ll do everything possible to make it happen.

The only thing keeping counterfeit “gay marriage” from spreading state-to-state is the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Due to the U.S. Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause – which requires that states respect the “public acts, records, and judicial rulings” of other states – “gay marriage,” without DOMA, becomes a communicable social malady. DOMA is a boost of penicillin in America’s arm. It inoculates states from being forced to recognize counterfeit marriages from other states like California, Massachusetts or Connecticut.

In 2004, Obama called DOMA an “abhorrent law” and said, “The repeal of DOMA is essential. … For the record,” he continued, “I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.” Obama also came out earlier this year in favor of the May 15 California Supreme Court decision that unilaterally redefined natural marriage in that state to include same-sex duos. “I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks,” Obama gushed. Despite assurances otherwise, these are not the words or policies of a man who opposes “same-sex marriage.”

But Obama’s contempt for the sanctity of natural marriage is only the beginning. As a candidate for the highest office in the land, his hostility toward the tens of millions of Americans who respect traditional sexual morality is unprecedented. He has enthusiastically signed off on every demand of militant homosexual pressure groups. Said Obama, “We must be careful to keep our eyes on the prize – equal rights for every American. We must continue to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). We must vigorously expand hate-crime legislation and be vigilant about how these laws are enforced. We must continue to expand adoption rights to make them consistent and seamless throughout all 50 states, and we must repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy.”

So, let’s break it down. If elected, Obama has promised to sign radical thought-crimes legislation into law, effectively criminalizing respect for biblical morality. These laws would punish those who oppose sexual behaviors that every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology have coldly rejected.

ENDA and “hate-crimes” legislation will unconstitutionally compel Christians and other people with traditional values to abandon those beliefs and adopt – under penalty of law – the postmodern “anything goes” view of human sexuality. Such “sexual orientation” laws have been the precursor to even more oppressive “hate-speech” laws in Canada, Great Britain and throughout Europe. But as Obama has signaled, these laws will not remain confined to his beloved Europe. There is little doubt that such laws will be similarly enforced here in the U.S under his administration. If you happen to believe that God created human sexuality to be shared between husband and wife within the bonds of marriage, you’d better not say so or you’ll suffer very real consequences.

Still, Obama’s loyalty to America’s sexual anarchists doesn’t stop there. He’s additionally sworn to turn the U.S. military into a cultural petri dish. Having no military experience of his own, he would nonetheless arrogantly disregard the vast majority of our military leaders and allow open homosexuals and cross-dressers to infiltrate the ranks of the armed forces – during a time of war – thereby disrupting military readiness and unit cohesion. To use the armed forces for such radical social experimentation is both dangerous and gravely irresponsible.

Finally, Obama’s promise to require “gay” adoption in all 50 states is particularly troubling. Here, his blind arrogance billows over. Once again he and his homosexual activist cohorts presume to know better than both God and science. As if common sense weren’t enough, studies have firmly established that children are best served with both a mother and a father. Although it’s not always possible, mom and dad each provide unique qualities vital in healthy child development. To selfishly place untold thousands of children in intentionally motherless or fatherless homes so that Chad and Thad can dress up and play house represents the height of narcissism.

So yes, if elected, Barack Obama – the “change candidate” – will undoubtedly live up to his name. He will certainly institute sweeping change over the next four to eight years. But as you walk into that voting booth on Nov. 4, consider whether Obama’s brand of change is change America can afford. Because isn’t change – for the mere sake of change – really just chump change?

Matt Barber is director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Counsel and Liberty Alliance Action and associate dean with Liberty University School of Law. Barber also serves on the Board of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality, a group devoted to countering the nation’s “gay” lobby. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)

The following is the text of an edited letter sent by then-U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama to the Windy City Times, one of two homosexual newspapers in Chicago. Note that WCT editors shortened the letter, apparently for publication. According to a 2007 ABC News report, “Would Obama Position Spread Same-Sex Marriage?,” Obama shifted his position from one of supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to opposing it on Feb. 4, 2004 — in other words, as announced by this letter. (The U.S. Senate passed DOMA by a vote of 84-14 on Sept. 10, 1996; Obama’s running-mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was among those who voted for bill.)

ABC News reported, “When he began his campaign for U.S. Senate, [Obama] told a group called Independent Voters of Illinois — Independent Precinct Organization that he supported D.O.M.A. He then switched to an anti-D.O.M.A. position on Feb. 11, 2004, as the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary drew near. According to Obama’s staff, the Illinois Democrat changed positions mid-campaign because he heard from gay friends how hurtful D.O.M.A. was.”

Emphasis and web links are added below:

_____________________________________

Windy City Times
2004-02-11
Obama on Marriage

As an African-American man, a child of an interracial marriage, a committed scholar, attorney and activist who works to protect the Bill of Rights, I am sensitive to the struggle for civil rights. As a state Senator, I have taken on the issue of civil rights for the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] community as if they were my own struggle because I believe strongly that the infringement of rights for any one group eventually endangers the rights enjoyed under law by the entire population. Since 1996, I have been the sponsor or a chief co-sponsor of measures to expand civil liberties for the LGBT community including hate-crimes legislation, adoption rights and the extension of basic civil rights to protect LGBT persons from discrimination in housing, public accommodations, employment and credit.

Today, I am a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Unlike any of my opponents, I have a legislative track record. No one has to guess about what I will do in Washington. My record makes it very clear. I will be an unapologetic voice for civil rights in the U.S. Senate.

For the record, I opposed DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. This is an effort to demonize people for political advantage, and should be resisted … .

When Members of Congress passed DOMA, they were not interested in strengthening family values or protecting civil liberties. They were only interested in perpetuating division and affirming a wedge issue. …

Despite my own feelings about an abhorrent law, the realities of modern politics persist. While the repeal of DOMA is essential, the unfortunate truth is that it is unlikely with Mr. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress. …

We must be careful to keep our eyes on the prize—equal rights for every American. We must continue to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. We must vigorously expand hate-crime legislation and be vigilant about how these laws are enforced. We must continue to expand adoption rights to make them consistent and seamless throughout all 50 states, and we must repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy.

I know how important the issue of equal rights is to the LGBT community. I share your sense of urgency. If I am elected U.S. Senator, you can be confident that my colleagues in the Senate and the President will know my position.

Barack Obama

Democratic Candidate for the U.S. Senate