Talking to 'Gay Youth' about God at the 'Night of Noise'
4/21/2005 9:52:00 PM
By Peter LaBarbera, IFI Executive Director
.jpg) | IFI Executive Director
Peter LaBarbera |
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
(Proverbs 14:12, NIV)
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
(John 3:16, NIV)
A Special Message from Peter LaBarbera, Executive Director, Illinois Family Institute:
Dear IFI Readers,
I want to share with you a letter I received from a pro-"gay" teen activist whom I met while standing as a dissenter at a pro-homosexual youth rally last week in downtown Chicago.
Here is the context behind the letter: on April 13, I attended the "Night of Noise" rally in downtown Chicago that followed the pro-homosexual "Day of Silence"--a nationwide protest in which students (and, we later learned, some teachers) went intentionally silent during the entire school day to protest the alleged "silencing" of homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals worldwide.
Illinois Family Institute was a leading critic of the "Day of Silence" in Illinois (click HERE for more on the "Day of Silence").
The "Night of Noise," sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is an annual outdoor rally designed to "end the silence" and celebrate "GLBT" ("gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender") clubs in Chicagoland schools.
I went to the rally with a sign that read, "Nobody Has to Be 'Gay,'" because that's what I firmly believe. I also wanted to invite these "GLBT" students to hear one of the IFI-sponsored talks by former homosexual Stephen Bennett the next two evenings. (Stephen's presentations, including one on the Alliance Defense Fund's "Day of Truth" were superb!)
Anyway, before I go on, here's the nice e-note I received from Alissa, a student at Homewood-Flossmoor High School south of Chicago who organized the "Gay? Fine by me" pro-homosexual T-shirt campaign at her school (click HERE for the IFI story). (In what emerged as a "T-shirt war," Alissa's pro-homosexual T-shirts were countered by others with a pro-Christian message.) She was also one of about 100-150 attendees at the Night of Noise event:
Hello Peter-
This is Alissa ...I just wanted to say that our short conversation last night was entirely enlightening to me. Not that I have changed my opinions on homosexuality, but I have changed the way I view you and your group. When I first read your article about the ['Gay'?] Fine By Me project, I felt very attacked. Yet, I realized after talking with you and your friend, that you are really respectful, and just because we differ on opinion, doesn't mean that either of us should dislike the other.
I was so happy that I actually got to talk to you, as a person. Although I do not speak for anyone else but myself, I apologize for the way some people were attacking you last evening, especially that old man at the end (sorry! I know it isn't nice to call him "that old man" but I had no idea who he was). You are exactly right, though: if homosexuals expect to ever gain a peaceful existence, going around threatening others is not the way to do it, and I am very upset that you would encounter that. Once you and I spoke though, I felt like we had a good conversation.
If you would like (or would be willing to), I would love to talk to you more. Preferably not at my school, as I don't want to cause any more upset than I already have with the administration--I promise I am on some sort of "wanted students" list by now. You seem like a great guy, and even though we might not change each other's opinions, I think a conversation or friendly debate would be very beneficial for both of us.
Let me know, and take care!
Alissa I appreciate Alissa's candor and kindness, and look forward to more dialogue with her and those who think homosexuality should be celebrated. What she was apologizing for were the crude antics of some "Night of Noise" celebrants--such as two young men obnoxiously kissing each other right next to me--and the menacing remarks of a veteran activist ("that old man"), Bob Schwartz, a leader with the Gay Liberation Network (formerly the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network).
There was also one twenty-something guy who tried to grab my sign before he was stopped by a policeman protecting my First Amendment rights.
Violent threats in the name of tolerance
Schwartz, a short, older man with a beard, said that if it weren't for my "friends"--the police who were protecting me--"I would be pushing you into the street." (Imagine if I had threatened a "gay" activist in such a way!) Doug Ibendahl of Republican Young Professionals and www.ThinkRed.us was there next to me for moral support and witnessed Schwartz making the threat.
Bob Schwartz is not a very tolerant fellow. For one who professes to be against "hate," he sure spewed a lot of it at me that night, which embarrassed the younger homosexual activists who were mostly civil and friendly towards me.
As a confirmed leftist, Schwartz tried to tell anyone who would listen the sinister reality that I am--yes, you guessed it, a Nazi. He yelled angrily that I had a "brown shirt" under my jacket and called me "LaBarbarian," as his group is wont to do. Another Gay Liberation Network activist carried a sign denouncing IFI's "homophobia." Oh well, such are the lies of the Left (we're still waiting for their apology for backing worldwide Soviet communism).
Now, let me tell you about the teens and their allies whom I encountered.
All about God
We spend a lot of time and energy in the pro-family movement fashioning secular "public policy" arguments against homosexual "marriage," abortion, pornography and other social evils, but on Wednesday night the conversations I had with the Chicagoland "GLBT" kids were all about God. Here's some of what I heard:
"Jesus loves everyone"
"How can you call me a sinner?"
"God created gays"
"You are following an outdated interpretation of Scripture"
"I was born this way"
And so it went for about two hours outside the State of Illinois building where the "Night of Noise" rally was being held.
Chalk it up to America's religious heritage, or maybe it's just the residue of Midwestern wholesomeness, but almost all of the "gay"-sympathetic people I talked to--young and older--sought affirmation that God approved of their homosexuality.
Of course, I was there to tell them otherwise, but I hadn't prepared to spend the evening talking about spiritual matters.
Will proud lesbians go to heaven?
One woman who appeared to be in her early forties told me, with the defiance of someone who, perhaps deep down, was still persuading herself as well as me, that she was a "lesbian Christian," and that I was wrong to judge her. (Of course, God is the Judge, not me.) She bitterly told how she had grown up in the Wheaton area but came to reject traditional evangelical (i.e., historic orthodox) interpretations of the Bible on homosexuality.
At first, she accused me of bringing a message of hate to the youth rally, but when I asked her what was hateful about the sign's message, "Nobody Has to Be 'Gay,'" she apologized.
My heart goes out to this woman, whose name I can't recall but who hopefully will recognize herself in this writing. Her parting words to me were, "I'll see you in heaven as a Christian lesbian," or something to that effect.
Of course, I do hope she makes it to heaven, but the Bible teaches that it won't be as an unrepentant lesbian:
[D]o you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11, NASB) The verse above speaks to the truth that people practicing homosexuality have been changing and being made into "new creations" in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) for 2,000 years. The lesbian woman's mistake, and that of so many other homosexual Bible revisionists like her, is that their theology is backwards: they start with the desired end goal (i.e., being "gay" is OK or even a "gift from God") and then manipulate the Bible to obtain that result.
True godliness comes the complete opposite way: we must hold up our sinful, stubborn and deceptive hearts--(Jeremiah 17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?")--to the changeless, holy standard of the Word of God. Then we allow the Lord to mold us into His image, as revealed by the Word, with the help of the Holy Spirit..
This involves repenting of our sinful ways (i.e., turning away from them), all the while resting in the sacrifice of God's perfect son, Jesus Christ, as the propitiation for our sins. We can't make it on our own, and we must never rely on our own "feelings" over the Bible's revealed truth in deciding what is right and what isn't.
There is simply no getting around a rational reading of the Bible that homosexuality is considered among sexually immoral behaviors that can be changed.
So to that woman, the "Christian lesbian," I say: Don't give up on Christ! He is more than powerful enough to help you overcome your lesbianism. If He weren't, He wouldn't be God. Humble yourself and turn your life over in repentance to Him who has healed many women like you of this sin, and who has forgiven and changed countless millions of other sinners, including me. Don't "remake" God and the Bible, but allow yourself to be remade by Him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Drag kings and 'genderqueers'
The "Night of Noise" rally was a study in the radicalism and anarchy of the homosexual-bisexual-transsexual movement. It was co-emceed by a twenty-five-ish female "drag king"--that is, a male impersonator: the female opposite of the notorious male "drag queens." There were high school "Day of Silence" testimonies, a short speech by Mayor Daley's liaison to the homosexual community, and a performance involving "genderqueers," a relatively new invention in the ever-expanding world of "GLBT" "identities."
According to one hip online dictionary, a genderqueer is "a gender-variant person whose gender identity is neither male nor female, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders."
A more apt description might be: confused individuals whose rebellion against God has taken them so far as to reject His naturally evident and divinely-ordered creation of maleness and femaleness.
As it says in the Bible in the New Testament Book of Romans (1:30), "they invent ways of doing evil."
For school teachers, counselors and administrators to use their special authority and influence to confirm impressionable teenagers in these radical identities and behaviors is nothing short of societal madness.
What is sin?
Indeed, it was hard for me to get as mad at the children (teens) as I was at the grown-ups. Rebellion has long marked the teenage years; it's just that in these crazy times, it manifests itself in more extreme behaviors than in years past. (Of course, the Sixties generation with its Sexual Revolution did set the bar for selfish excess pretty high.)
When it came to the high school youth who approached me to talk, there was so much misinformation, bad theology and outright disregard for the Bible that our conversations had to start with the most basic tenets of Christianity, and even then we often talked past each other.
For example, I tried to persuade one teenaged girl--who appeared to be among the "drag king" contingent of girls dressing up as men (she had a pathetically-drawn mustache over her lips)--that sin is a reality, and hence so is our need to be redeemed from it through the death and resurrection of God's son, Jesus Christ.
Scrambling for a way to demonstrate the truth of what Christians call our "sin nature," I asked her if she had ever noticed that toddlers do not have to be taught how to be selfish and envious (I know: I have five-year-old twins!). That's because sin comes naturally to us all, starting at very young ages.
Mankind is not inherently good but innately sinful, and in need of a Savior. There is no "gay gene," but we all have the sin gene.
The girl with the black-ink mustache listened attentively, and was very respectful, but her irreligious background left us with precious little common ground to discuss theological concepts that were once almost universally accepted in Western culture.
I suppose in the mind of a "post-modern" (read: "post-Christian") thinker, there is nothing standing in the way of girls identifying as boys, and vice versa--or having sex with whatever gender they desire on any given day--so long as it's all "consensual," as the liberals like to say.
Nevertheless, I have more respect for that girl, confused as she was, than for the "gay Christians" and their religious allies who somehow find in the Bible complete acceptance of homosexuality and transsexuality--new "truths" they allegedly "discovered" in the last quarter century.
I believe they will one day be judged for leading these youths astray.
Going beyond politics
In a small way, I hope that like Alissa, the "GLBT" students and adults I encountered appreciated the genuine diversity of viewpoint they encountered on their Night of Noise, even if I was a very flawed witness for Biblical truth.
As for me, I came away with a renewed appreciation for the intensity of young people, and the knowledge that we must reach beyond our public policy position papers and Culture War sound-bites to share the love and truth of God--directly--with those we claim, as Christians, to love. God bless you.
Sincerely in Christ,
Peter LaBarbera
Executive Director
info@illinoisfamily.org
Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.
(1 Corinthians 16:13-14, NASB)
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