On yesterday’s edition of The Janet Mefferd Show, anti-gay pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas labeled the message of liberals “hopeless,” and said that gay people lead a “miserable lifestyle” that is predisposed to “depression, or suicide, or alcoholism.” Jefress’s comments are the latest in a string of anti-gay screeds. He has previously implied that gay rights will result in the “inevitable implosion of our country” and that gays are using a variety of “brainwashing techniques” to “inject homosexuality” into our culture.
Jeffress: God’s plan for sexuality is one man with one woman in a lifetime commitment called marriage. Any deviation from that is sin. And of course, I’m always, the retort to that is ‘oh! Are you pulling a Rick Santorum and saying that homosexuality is like bestiality, uh, incest, or pedophilia’? And I say ‘Yes.’. It is just as immoral as those practices. But then I’m quick to add, it’s also just as immoral as adultery, pre-marital sex, or unbiblical divorce. Any deviation from god’s plan is sin.
Mefferd: Well, but so much of what they’re trying to do now is not just say “accept us and don’t be discriminatory in your beliefs”. But also, embrace it, see that the bible really was wrong in these passages, in Leviticus and Romans I and it’s really not commending homosexuality. It’s almost as if they’re trying to co-opt the bible and make it say what it obviously does not say.
Jeffress: Absolutely, you have to do so many hermeneutical gymnastics. But what you really have to do is just throw out the bible to get to the point that you say, that uh, it’s uh normal. There are two agendas that homosexuals have in order to gain acceptance. First of all they try to normalize their behavior but also to marginalize as bigots those of us who oppose homosexuality. Normalize and marginalize are the two tactics. And they are being extremely successful about it.
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Jeffress: We’re the ones that have a message of hope. And the message of hope we have is you don’t have to stay the way you are. You can experience freedom. You can experience life as god intended you to have it, by trusting in Christ and following his plan. You know, it’s the liberals that have no message of hope. It is the liberal message; ‘you’re born that way, and you have to stay that way until the day you die.’ I mean, why is it that gays, and I talk about this in my book, you know, have such a more preponderance for depression, or suicide, or alcoholism. It is a miserable lifestyle. And that is why we, as preachers of the gospel and Christians, we’ve got the message of hope, and we need to quit being ashamed to share it.
