In a column today criticizing growing support for marriage equality in the U.S., Chris Johnson of the American Decency Association said that gay people, like other egregious sinners, “deserve the death penalty.”
Johnson, commenting on a recent blog post by Southern Baptist Convention official Albert Mohler, insists “we must love our fellow sinners, but it is not loving to call good what a just God has called evil.”
“The laws of God cannot be overruled or deemed unconstitutional,” he writes. “Of course, we ALL break those laws and being a homosexual doesn’t make a man a sinner any more or less than being a gossip. Both crimes deserve the death penalty, and only the one who relies on the righteousness of Christ can escape it.”
We’ve moved a long way from 1996 when Democrat president Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, which solidified marriage as being between a man and a woman for federal purposes. Eighteen years later, the executive office is not defending that law, a portion of it has been ruled unconstitutional, and 19 states recognize homosexual “marriage.”
According to Gallup, support for homosexual marriage has doubled in the same time frame. In ’96, 27% of those polled said that homosexual “marriages” should be recognized by the law as valid. In 2014, 55% expressed that sentiment.
In the midst of this tidal shift of morality – when, as Dr. Mohler says, “the refusal to celebrate [homosexuality] is now condemned” – Christianity is left out to dry.
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The church is not a Christian congress or Supreme Court. The laws of God cannot be overruled or deemed unconstitutional.
Of course, we ALL break those laws and being a homosexual doesn’t make a man a sinner any more or less than being a gossip. Both crimes deserve the death penalty, and only the one who relies on the righteousness of Christ can escape it.
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Yes, we must love our fellow sinners, but it is not loving to call good what a just God has called evil.
Even if all other arguments were to escape us, i.e. church tradition, science, and logic, our faith would require obedience.
