(On Sunday, July 5, 2009, Pastor Kuru’s message addressed the matter of the Delhi High Court ruling favouring homosexuals. The following article is based on that message with added material regarding Freud, Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson and their views).
"Decriminalization" is the new buzzword in India. Just weeks ago the Delhi High Court decriminalized homosexuality. It ruled that treating consensual gay sex as a crime was a violation of fundamental rights protected by India's constitution. One gay activist said, "We've finally entered the 21st century."
Decriminalization involves declaring that something that was once a crime is no longer a crime. To put it another way, what was once red is no longer red; what was once green is no longer green. Logic tells us that that's just not possible. Either something was red and is still red, or it was never red in the first place. Human sanction or legislation doesn't change reality and truth.
Most of our statutory laws were received from the Brits, and for the most part we have not amended them. The law about homosexual conduct is part of our British legacy. According to British law in the colonial era, homosexual acts were "against the order of nature." What needs to be recognized is that that notion was not based on the national culture of Britain, but on the teaching of the Bible.
Today, most Western nations are best described as godless societies. Most people are irreligious. They are not atheists, but agnostics. They don’t say that there is no God, but that they don’t know if there is one. If there is one, they feel that they do quite well without depending on God. If there is one, God is in deity’s corner, and they are in theirs. God doesn’t bother them and they don’t bother God. Life goes on. Given such a view of life, it is not surprising that values based on what the Bible teaches are being discarded in the Occident.
Freud Slips
First there was Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), an Austrian neurologist. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind. He said that the mind represses unpleasant incidents and memories. That is just a defense mechanism that people use unconsciously to cope with whatever threatens their well-being. He also introduced the concept of psychoanalysis (dialogue between a patient and a psychiatrist) in treating people battling their mental demons of fear, anxiety, animosity, resentment and so on.
Freud is also known for redefining sex as the basic motivational energy of human life. He used free association to analyze the patient and regarded dreams as revealing unconscious desires. Many of his ideas have been given up or modified by neo-Freudians, though some are rediscovering and affirming his concepts.
The Guru of Sexology
The modern Sex Revolution began with Alfred Kinsey, the guru of sexology. He is credited with having begun the revolution in social awareness of human sexuality and all the public attention given to it. In 1948 Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and followed it with Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953. Time featured him on the cover in 1953 and the main article concluded on this note:
'Kinsey...has done for sex what Columbus did for geography,' declared a pair of enthusiasts...forgetting that Columbus did not know where he was when he got there.... Kinsey's work contains much that is valuable, but it must not be mistaken for the last word.
However the American population in general didn’t share the excitement of the news media, which has largely tended to hail everything that departs from the normal. There is a reason for their enthusiasm. Good news is not news. Only bad news is: that 98 persons were not murdered in bed is not news, but the 2 that were murdered is news. While most people didn’t buy Kinsey’s research and were not in favour of holding it up as something to be taken note of, the media chose to side with Kinsey to push society into doing stuff that would make news.
Not until 1981 did anyone challenge Kinsey’s research. That year in Jerusalem at the 5th World Congress of Sexology, the gutsy mother of two girls Judith A. Reisman lectured on Dr. Kinsey and his data involving kids. She asked how Kinsey and his staff had gathered the information to produce the data in Tables 30-34 of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which report observations of orgasms of children ranging from 5 months to 14 years:
How could he say 196 little children—some as young as 2-months of age—enjoyed "fainting," "screaming," "weeping," and "convulsing"—how could he call these children's responses evidence of their sexual pleasure and "climax"? I called it evidence of terror, of pain, as well as criminal. One of us was very, very mixed-up.
It was obvious Kinsey and his team had to be guilty of exposing more than 300 children to molestation by paedophiles in the name of scientific research. The man was not a scientist, but a criminal, and he got away with his crimes against children only because of the tendency of moderns to be in awe of anything that claims to be scientific research (To read Reisman’s report of her findings about Kinsey go to http://www.special-guests.com/reisman4.html).
Kinsey himself led a life of immorality. In his biography of Kinsey (Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life) James H. Jones described him as a bisexual who experimented in bizarre and outlandish sexual practices.
Professors did not engage in that sort of behavior with their graduate students, yet Kinsey seemed totally oblivious to sexual taboos . . . as though he was determined to flaunt them . . . Kinsey had become a sexual rebel . . . manipulative and aggressive, a man who abused his professional authority and betrayed his trust as a teacher. Only a compulsive man would have taken such risks.
By the time Kinsey took up his research, he was an avowed atheist who embraced the science of eugenics, which called for the elimination of "lower level" humans (just like Hitler who wanted to eliminate the weak strains in order to develop his super race).
That he had an "ax to grind" was evident in his life-long refusal to permit Blacks, Jews, and committed Christians on his staff.
Research?
Kinsey’s questionnaire was so sexually explicit that ordinary folks were not willing to answer it. Kinsey was forced to rely on "volunteers"—deviants, convicts, prostitutes and the like, but Kinsey classified 1400 criminals and sex offenders as "normal." His argument was that they were just like everyone else—except that they had been caught.
Renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow was Kinsey’s friend. Maslow had proved his hypothesis that people who volunteered for sex studies were almost always "unconventional"—notorious for unhealthy and prohibited sexual activity. Researching them would drive one to the conclusion that the percentages for non-virginity, masturbation, promiscuity and homosexuality are very high. And that is exactly what happened.
According to Kinsey's manipulated data, 95 percent of the American male population regularly indulged in deviant sexual activity such as extra-marital affairs, homosexuality, incest, paedophilia, bestiality, etc. When Maslow offered to help Kinsey clean up this "volunteer error", Kinsey terminated the friendship because it would compromise the results he wanted to get. (Yes, the operative word was “wanted”).
Not Everyone fooled:
W. Allen Wallis, of the University of Chicago, one-time President of the American Statistical Association, said that there were serious flaws in Kinsey's methodology of interviewing sex offenders.
The Lancet, a British medical journal, concluded that Kinsey "questioned an unrepresentative proportion of prison inmates and sex offenders in a survey of normal sexual behaviour."
Dr. Albert Hobbs, a sociologist and author at the University of Pennsylvania condemned Kinsey for violating three basic principles in scientific research:
- No preconceived hypothesis should force the results
- Disclose to scientific peers the basic data on which conclusions rest.
- Provide the questionnaire which extracted the data.
Harriet R. Mowrer, a marital-adjustment consultant, was one who warned of the danger of accepting Kinsey's findings at face value:
To accept the Kinsey findings without exacting scrutiny...would be to perpetuate the error...with harmful results to society...
Those warnings went unheeded. Kinsey's nonsense was swallowed in toto. Even though the vast majority of people did consider homosexual behaviour to be abnormal and immoral, by calling it an "alternative life style" they were fooled into accepting it. Popular rhetoric about "tolerance" and "inclusiveness," then did the rest to lull people’s consciences. (The facts about Kinsey’s research may be verified at http://www.drjudithreisman.com/articles.html If you want to verify that Reisman is not making all this up, go to BNet, an on-line management magazine and read the review by Terry Teachout at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n19_v49/ai_19866346/pg_2/?tag=content;col1).
The Bottom Line
Here’s the bottom line: What Kinsey did wasn’t science. He had preconceived notions that he dumped on society with the intention of manipulating society to fit in with his views and practices.
…The Kinsey Report continues to influence American thinking on sex, even though its major findings have been disproved or significantly modified by later studies; whenever you encounter the oft-repeated claim that one in ten Americans is homosexual, you are hearing a distant echo of Kinsey’s original research… Statisticians were appalled by his homemade methodology; intellectuals were no less appalled by his crudely reductive view of human nature. But most people merely gulped and took Kinseys word for it…He was, after all, a scientist. Why would he lie about such things? Innumerable scholars of repute were just as naive about Kinsey’s motives, and for the same reason: they assumed that scientists were by definition disinterested seekers of truth, who through their best efforts would help turn America into a clean, well-lighted place…The truth about Kinsey is that he was no impersonal gatherer of scientific data, but…a man who intended to use science to attack Victorian morality and to promote an ethic of tolerance. Moreover, he had a personal stake in seeking to overturn traditional morality, for he was also a bisexual…from the outset of his research, he sought out as many male homosexual interviewees as possible, both because little was then known about homosexuality, and in order to discreetly engage in anonymous sexual relations with men in the large cities to which he traveled in search of data. For this reason and also because he similarly oversampled prison inmates Kinsey vastly overestimated the incidence of homosexual behavior among Americans (possibly by more than three times, according to later surveys based on statistically reliable random samples of large populations…his methodology and sampling technique virtually guaranteed that he would find what he was looking for. Nor can there be any question that his books were written in order to persuade readers that all forms of human sexuality, including his own, were equally acceptable…Kinsey’s own tolerance of "sexual variation, as he called it, was so complete as to include pedophilia…(Terry Teachout, “Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life”, National Review, Oct 13, 1997).
It is based on such warped science as Kinsey’s, that homosexuals and those sympathizing with them have imagined that there is some sort of “gay gene” that justifies the gay campaign to gain legitimacy. But speculation isn’t reality. In this case, it’s obvious that the speculation about the existence of a gene isn’t even logical. If there is a gay gene, how on earth could it be passed on by those whose sexual activity is absolutely and completely un-reproductive?
More Research
After Kinsey there were William Howell Masters (a gynaecologist) Virginia Eshelman Johnson (a psychologist). Masters and Johnson initiated a project that ultimately included direct laboratory observation and measurement of 700 men and women while they were having intercourse or masturbating. Based on the data collected in this study, they co-authored the book Human Sexual Response in 1966. Their research methods proved Maslow’s point that volunteers for sex research are not normal but “unconventional.” Their major contribution was to define sexuality as healthy and advocating that pleasure and intimacy during sex were worthy goals.
All through the 1970s and 1980s, Masters and Johnson continued their research and publication efforts. In their book Homosexuality in Perspective (1979), Masters and Johnson debunked the notion that homosexuality is a mental illness. However, their claim that they could help those homosexuals who wished to change to actually change their sexual preferences produced considerable criticism from the gay community and from other sex researchers.
Start of Decriminalization
Under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act of England, homosexual acts were classified as criminal offences punishable with imprisonment. But in 1953 Baron Edward Montagu (a 28-year-old socialite and the youngest peer in the House of Lords), Michael Pitt-Rivers (a landowner) and Peter Wildeblood (a journalist) were tried and punished for committing homosexual acts. Their cases aroused sympathy in the right quarters and Parliament debated about changing the law. But note that until three rich boys were caught, changing the law was never considered.
Under the guidance of Derrick Sherwin Bailey (1910–1984), an ad hoc group of Anglican clergy, doctors and lawyers formed to study the subject (no doubt taking into consideration the theories of Kinsey and of Masters and Johnson, and then produced the pamphlet The Problem of Homosexuality. Bailey himself also published Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition which has ever since been regarded as a sort of seminal text by all who promote homosexuality as a lifestyle that is merely different from that of the majority. The initiative of Bailey’s group paved the way for the production of the 1957 “Wolfenden Report” which said,
The law's function is to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive or injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others. It is not, in our view, the function of the law to intervene in the private life of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular pattern of behaviour.
Ten years later in 1967 the British Parliament changed the law, and opened the way for others to follow in decriminalizing homosexual conduct.
But as far as the biblical message goes, homosexual conduct is to be condemned, restrained and punished. People forget that while human law talks of “crimes”, the Bible talks of “sins.” The distinction is that crimes are offences punishable by law, while sins are immoral acts that violate divine law.
Distinctions
Nowadays, psychologists, doctors, and theologians accommodate homosexuals by saying that there are people who are homosexual by orientation, and that as a condition homosexuality is neither a crime, nor a sin. This was the thin end of the wedge. It has been just a short step from saying that if the condition exists, to advocating that their condition cannot be denied fulfilment.
Even though researchers Masters and Johnson have shown that homosexuality is not a sickness, subconsciously most people do think of it as an illness, and as such think of homosexuals as those in need of sympathy and TLC.
When a society begins to look at wrongdoing as sickness, there is necessarily talk of treating the perpetrators, rather than punishing them. If a thief is suffering from kleptomania, his mania needs to be treated. A homicidal maniac must also be dealt with more sympathetically, because he’s just sick.
Of course, consensual homosexual acts are not to be categorized with crimes that violate other persons (as when a thief or a murderer does their thing). However if being consensual is the measure of an act being okay, then Kinsey’s argument that paedophilia is okay as long as the child consents will get approval some time.
Society suffers from a jaundiced viewpoint that prevents it from seeing wrongdoing as wrongdoing. It is also suffering from the lunacy of thinking that since the victim has already suffered (loot or rape or murder), we can be gentler and kinder toward the perpetrators of crimes.
The legitimacy that homosexuals want is no longer about letting them live and have the right to food, housing and employment. It is about letting them do whatever they feel like doing, to engage in sex according to their preference. “I am like that only,” is what homosexuals are saying, and people are allowing them to use the thin end of the wedge to prise open the door for them engage in homosexual acts. Next, they will demand the right to raise kids (they have not produced) and corrupt them by the suggestiveness of the environment and the conduct they are exposed to. India Today (July 20, 2009, pp.52-53) quotes a homosexual’s wish to adopt a child. They’re already giving notice!
What the Bible Says
The Old Testament states the prohibitions against homosexual acts clearly (Lev.18:22-30; 20:13). The Lord Jesus never said a word about the sin of homosexuality, but indicated that He Himself had come to fulfil the Law in its entirety, and that anyone who taught contrary to the Old Testament would be demoted in the Kingdom of God (Matt.5:17-19). In fact, Jesus said that to enter His kingdom people must go beyond the Pharisees (v.20).
There is no mistaking the meaning of the plain words of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 Timothy 1:9-10. No one can rightly say that the New Testament does not teach against homosexuality.
Paul said that the occurrence of homosexual conduct is in itself the judgement of God. When people give up God, then they are leaving the light and the glory of God (Rom.1:21-23), and God in turn gives up on them so that they are enslaved by degraded passions (Rom.1:24-32).
Similarly, Jude reflected on the history of Sodom and Gomorrah having “indulged in gross immorality” and gone “after strange flesh.” Jude said that consequent to such perversion, God’s punishment has already begun:
And remember the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the other towns around them. In the same way they were full of sexual sin and people who desired sexual relations that God does not allow. They suffer the punishment of eternal fire, as an example for all to see (v.7, NCV).
The Bible is clear: we reap what we sow, and some of the reaping happens in the present.
Most people do not recall that AIDS was first called GRID (Gay-Related-Immune-Disorder). In 1982 doctors and scientists in the US of A became aware of a strange new disease that was mainly affecting gay men. They were getting a rare kind of skin cancer. They got a rarer kind of pneumonia. Their immune systems were being destroyed completely: these people were sick, and had no way of fighting the illness. According to the evidence collected, being gay was not safe. It killed people.
Pointing to this bit of history is not politically correct. Seems to me that the biggest mistake of our generation is that of political correctness. Today the only intolerance that is permitted is that of being intolerant toward right thinking and right conduct. We are now required by law to show tolerance of evil and wrongdoing.
Walter Wink, professor emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary, New York City, wrote In his essay “Homosexuality and the Bible” (posted at http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink):
Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct…
After arguing that the Bible supported slavery and was once the basis for the domination of women, Wink wrote,
The way out, however, is not to deny the sexism in Scripture, but to develop an interpretive theory that judges even Scripture in the light of the revelation in Jesus. What Jesus gives us is a critique of domination in all its forms, a critique that can be turned on the Bible itself. The Bible thus contains the principles of its own correction. We are freed from bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible. It is restored to its proper place as witness to the Word of God. And that word is a Person, not a book. With the interpretive grid provided by a critique of domination, we are able to filter out the sexism, patriarchalism, violence, and homophobia that are very much a part of the Bible, thus liberating it to reveal to us in fresh ways the inbreaking, in our time, of God's domination-free order.
Wink could have come to no other conclusion. He had started by assuming that the way earlier generations viewed slavery and domination of women arose from the Bible itself, then debunked the authority of the Word and finally claimed the right to determine what to accept in the Bible. In the end, it is that old question that the serpent asked Eve, “Has God said?” The homosexual issue is about questioning the authority of God and His Word.
What Wink did was very clever. By showing his way as the “gentler, kinder” way, he presents it as the way of Jesus. Let’s not forget that Jesus wasn’t always gentle. He spoke harshly against the Pharisees, and He wielded a whip in the Temple precincts to drive out everyone for turning God’s house into a marketplace and a den of thieves.
Here are several things to consider:
- The biblical viewpoint on homosexual conduct doesn’t stand alone. Hinduism and Islam are also opposed to allowing it. So it’s not really a vestige of British law.
- Everyone wanting to allow homosexual acts does so on the basis of Kinsey’s false science. How can research-findings that have been intentionally twisted be accepted as the reason for change?
- Kinsey’s opinion that in sexuality anything goes cannot be trusted as reasonable: he favoured paedophilia.
It does look like the law will be changed to favour homosexuals. Indian society is going to change the rules of public conduct. But the church of Christ must hold on to what the Bible teaches. We have no other option, for our Lord says, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and not do what I command you?” (Lk.6:46).
