The Gay Rights Battle

Is there a logical and biblically supportable solution to the gay rights battle?

by Gary Petty

The cultural battle over gay rights has taken on a renewed energy. A decade ago the gay rights battlegrounds were the military and increased exposure in television and movies; now the battleground has extended to society's acceptance of gay marriage's equality with traditional heterosexual marriage and family.

Some U.S. political leaders are busy trying to garner support for a new law that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. At the same time, other lawmakers are lobbying for expansion of gay rights including the legalization of homosexual marriages. Even President Bush got into the act when he publicly declared his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman and equated homosexuality with sin.

Gay rights activists have scored some impressive victories in recent years, both culturally and politically: the Supreme Court's striking down a Texas antisodomy law as unconstitutional, a leading retail chain's public statements about protecting the rights of gay employees and public homosexual parties at Disney World to name a few.

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll shows some backlash against the gay agenda in the general public. While 48 percent of Americans polled said they supported legalization of same-sex relations between consenting adults, 46 percent said that same-sex unions should be illegal. This is the highest number of people taking a stand against homosexuality since 1996.

History of U.S. views toward homosexual behavior

To understand the intensity of this debate we must know a little of its history. The early settlers of the United States were nearly all Christians. They belonged to various denominations but overwhelmingly agreed that homosexual acts were morally wrong.

All of the original 13 states passed laws declaring homosexual activity punishable by death. Thomas Jefferson felt that capital punishment was too strict and proposed it be replaced with a lesser punishment. The last state to remove the death penalty for homosexual acts from its books was North Carolina in 1869.

Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn52/battle.htm

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