According to a new survey by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 64% of young adults think that the Church is “anti-gay” and 25% of them now consider themselves to be “unaffiliated”.

Whether one leads to the other is to be debated, but it does seem clear that this issue is cresting in our country and might just prove to be the watershed debate that ultimately breaks up the marriage between America and Christianity.

The survey went on to tell us that Christianity has taken a big hit in America because of its position on homosexuality and gay marriage, and it suggests that the trend is only going to increase in the years to come.

So, as pressure mounts on the Church to get with the program and change its attitude toward gays, Christians are put in a precarious position. Either they amend their beliefs to save face in the culture or they toe the line and risk its retaliation.

This particular issue resonates with the culture we live in because it feels like it’s a matter of civil rights and social equality. The gay marriage movement has cleverly branded this issue as a battle against bigotry.

It has framed the debate as a matter of “human rights” and has blamed the Church for impeding its efforts. So, Christianity takes the fall for supposedly standing in the way of social progress.

Inevitably, Christians who continue to cling to apparently archaic beliefs or dare to speak up about so-called biblical values are branded by the movement as old fashioned bigots.

Just as Christians in the Deep South of Segregated America were expected to come around on racial equality so are Christians in the Bible Belt of Postmodern America expected to do the same on sexual equality.

Social progressives like to align the present “struggle for freedom” among gays with the past “struggle for freedom” among blacks. And, they will argue that being gay is no different than being black, but that’s where they are wrong.

You see, nowhere in the Bible is being black considered a sin. Skin color is never viewed as a moral issue in Scripture. But, sexual preference is. The Bible is crystal clear about the wrongness of homosexuality.

The only way to not see that homosexuality is a sin is to either ignore portions of Scripture or reject the authority of Scripture altogether. And, this is exactly why every Christian is now put into a predicament.

They have to make a choice between rejecting God’s Word thereby enjoying the acceptance of their society and keeping God’s Word thus suffering the persecution from their society.

What our culture does not understand is that we cannot just “change” our beliefs and still claim to be Christians. We cannot choose what parts of Scripture we will obey and what parts we will ignore.

We are required by our God to observe and keep all of His commands, and the consequence of disappointing Him is much worse for us than the consequence of frustrating our culture.

What our society is trying to do is to force us into choosing between our faith and our culture, and what they are really asking us to do is to not be Christians. After all, we cannot be partial Christians. That just isn’t an option for us.

To be a true Christian and to be the true Church, we must be against sin, all sin. This means that Christianity is not anti-gay. It’s anti-sin. Since homosexuality is a sin, we cannot accept it.

The Church does not reject homosexuals in the same way that it does not reject liars, cheaters, adulterers, and murderers. What the Church rejects is unrepentant sin. Everybody in the church is a sinner, but Christians agree to turn from their sin.

As the Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

But, notice what he says next. Paul writes, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

According to Paul, Christianity isn’t anti-anyone. The Church is pro-repentance. All people are sinners, but Christians just admit it. They confess it and turn from it. And, that is precisely why it is so absurd for the culture to expect us to go back to it.

This issue probably will not go away, and it might be the very one that isolates the Church from the surrounding culture. It might also be the one that shrinks the Church in America as it forces every Christian to choose between allegiance to our God and acceptance by the world.

But, let it be known that the true Church in America will never capitulate to the culture on this issue. We can’t. Our commitment to biblical truth won’t allow it. Whatever persecution may come, the real Church must never back down on sin.

As Joan of Arc once defiantly declared, “I would rather die than do something which I know to be a sin, or to be against God’s will.” And, die she did, and so shall we.

I, for one, am disappointed and exhausted over the tireless staging on both sides and the vitriolic exchange that resurfaces every time a court ruling is handed down. May I suggest that we all just GROW UP and do what adults ought to do and begin to talk winsomely and constructively rather than angrily and vindictively? I think we all learned as children that talking louder does not make listening easier and that outbursts and tantrums do not win anyone over. So, I suggest we all take a breath or two, count to ten or ten thousand depending on how uptight we are, and try this again.

The first step toward constructive dialogue on this is that we all understand the primary concern for each side. For gay marriage opponents, the primary issue for us is that same gender sexual intimacy is expressly forbidden by God and is morally wrong because it undermines His design and expectation for the family that has been in place from the beginning. Though gay marriage proponents like to paint us opponents as religious kooks or wackos for claiming moral/ethical priority, the truth is that we do in fact have that priority as human history validates our claim that marriage has been defined as between man and woman in every culture and nation since the the garden.

For gay marriage proponents, their primary issue, as I understand it, is that they want to receive the same legal recognition and benefits that heterosexual couples have and see this issue as a matter of civil rights and equal opportunity. They feel slighted by a society that denies them the rights provided for other citizens solely because of their sexual orientation, and see the conservative and religious segment of society as the primary oppressors of their fundamental rights as citizens. Although gay marriage opponents tend to paint them as heathenish haters or rebels for wanting legal recognition, the truth is that they do in fact have the right to seek and push for that recognition from the government in a free but separated state and church society.

Now, that being said. Gay marriage opponents dislike and dismiss the idea that we live in a post-Christian America and that that the state and the church have been separated for the protection from one another. Though, we believe that the law of separation was written and implemented to primarily protect the church from the state, the law does also in turn provide a level of protection for the state as well. Whether we like it or not, there is a separation between church and state in this country that has been confirmed and enforced over and over again arguably beyond the way that it should be. But, the reality is that it is the way that it is. What we opponents dislike about this idea is that it seems that we have lost a voice in our culture that we once had, or more specifically, that we have lost the influence that we once enjoyed.  Truly, there was a time when Christians filled posts in all legal branches of government at the federal and state levels and those influenced the legal bearing of our nation for its first centuries but we have watched those posts continually abandoned and filled with non Christian leaders who have moved the state even further away from the church.

Given the fact that we now live in a secular society, we have to live with the implications. That means we have to learn to accept that the state will not favor or even befriend our perspectives and desires and we must not expect it to do so. The state is not a friend to the church but merely a legal guardian, and this means that we should not expect her to like or even hear us. Now, does that mean that we should not speak up and out for our interests and desires? Absolutely not. We are actually mandated by Scripture to work and care for God’s interests in the world, but we must be realistic in that endeavor and not be consumed with the things that are beyond our control. The issue of same gender sexual recognition is one of those issues for us. Though we must know and express winsomely God’s expectations for relationships in a fallen world, we must not expect an unbelieving world to understand or respect those expectations. Simply put, we should not expect a worldly government state to look out for our interests but be content with it merely permitting us to have them.

With that in mind, the wise and prudent thing for opponents to do in times like these is to permit the state to do as it will without interference or protest and instead focus our attention and energy on protecting the rights that the state does provide to the church.  One of those rights is the freedom to practice our religious tradition unabated. The institution of marriage is not a secular tradition but a sacred one, and it belongs to the church as it has from the beginning. The problem we find ourselves in today is that the state has legally recognized and protected our sacred institution, and we have permitted her to do so. And, in doing that, we should have foreseen and expected that the state would one day no longer feel the way that we do about marriage. Marriage is sacred, but the state has not and still does not see it that way. For the state, marriage has simply been the legal title placed on the family unit for legally recognized rights and privileges. But, for us, we do not need those rights and privileges attached for us to have a marriage covenant.

Therefore, in light of this, it seems wise for us to accept that the state will have the right to define and practice its own secular version of “marriage” and that the church will have its sacred version. In other words, the state will be the issuer of  legal contracts and the church will be the issuer of divine covenants. Though, we prefer very much that the state not use the term “marriage” to prevent confusion and to respect the church’s use of the term for millennia, the state should have the right to and will likely decide to create a secular “civil union” of sorts in order to accommodate the interests of a secularized and pluralized culture. This should not be unexpected or surprising for gay marriage opponents and is a thoughtful solution to a problem that is quickly spinning out of control.

Though many gay marriage opponents will likely see this as a “compromise” or defeat for their ideals, I see this is an appropriate and winsome resolution to a polarizing debate over gay marriage in our country and as reasonable topic for dialogue between both sides at the table. If we continue to simply try to plow through this deep impasse in our culture, we will likely end up with a divided nation consisting of “gay states” and “non gay states” and a huge mess on our hands deciding whether to secede from or build walls between each other, and I don’t think that either side wants to live in a country like that.

During that period I was slandered on the news and radio, mocked by the local newspapers and received hate mail and even death threats from people in the community. More painfully, I was castigated and shunned by other pastors and churches in our city for speaking up at all. This time in my life was probably the most tormented and lonely season that I have ever experienced, and I do not share this to illicit sympathy or to air out my complaints but only to make the point that I have a personal vested interest in this issue as I have bled and wept over it many times. Therefore, my take on the ever controversial issue of gay marriage is anything but ignorant or detached, so please don’t take it that way. It is only after several years of reflecting on the series of events that occurred that I am now ready to express what I have to say about it.

As a pastor who has been personally affected by this incendiary issue, what bothers me the most about the gay marriage debate is that it has become an issue of “personal rights”. What gay marriage proponents continue to do is liken their struggle for acceptance and legality to the civil rights struggle for equality. Though I have heard this argument ad nauseum, I still cannot see how this is a civil rights issue on par with the African Americans struggle for equality. First of all, are gay people prohibited from using the same restrooms as straight people? Are gay students segregated out from the straight at our schools? Are they denied the right to vote, to earn an equal wage at their job or even to fight and die for their country? The “right” that advocates are fighting for is the supposed “right” to get married. I don’t recall African Americans even in the height of the civil rights movement ever being denied the right to marry each other. Though the gay marriage lobby wants us to liken these movements to each other, they are starkly different. And, I have often wondered why African Americans aren’t deeply offended by these attempts to liken their struggle with the movement for gay marriage today.

Though we often hear the contrary, the truth is that there is no convincing evidence that homosexuality is genetically inherited and all the evidence suggests that nurture is much more profoundly influential on shaping who we become than nature. African Americans do not choose to be black but human beings do choose their orientation, and that’s the simple, undressed truth.

Now, that being said, here’s the rub. There is an ever increasing pressure on and relentless intimidation toward the church to “get with the times” and start accepting homosexuality as a viable orientation for living and gay marriage as an acceptable relationship. Though the heat keeps turning up on pastors and churches to capitulate to this pressure and vitriolic anger, the simple fact is that it won’t work. You see, the Church is not our own and pastors are not without authority. What gay marriage advocates must realize is that the Church and its pastors are under the authority of Jesus Christ. And, we are bound to His commands for the Church. So, even if a rogue church or pastor does cave in to the pressure, the fact is that the true Church won’t, ever. The Church has a long, long legacy of martyrdom and that is because we would always rather lay our lives down in death than turn our backs on the One we serve.

As a pastor, I have made the choice that I will not fear mankind but only God. And, I know that I am not alone in this. The Scriptures that we are obligated to uphold clearly dictate that the practice of homosexuality is a sin, and there is no way to get around that simple obvi0us truth. Those who say the Bible does not prohibit or condemn homosexuality do not know the Bible or the One who gave it. Therefore, as one of the underpastors to Jesus who has authority over His Church, let it be known clearly that we will NEVER compromise  or capitulate on this issue! This onslaught against the Church by outspoken gay marriage advocates simply will not prevail. No matter how much harm we suffer for this, we will not roll over. It’s just as simple as that, and it’s time to make that clear.

Now, since we have established that there is clearly an insurmountable impasse between gay marriage advocates and opponents on this issue, it’s time we really consider how to best live at peace with each other. The fact is that the pressure for gay marriage is not going to go away and that the backlash against it isn’t either, so what can we do? The solution, I believe, is rather simple. The fact of that matter is that gay marriage advocates are pushing for the “right” to marry primarily for the legal recognition with its inherent legal advantages that include tax, health and estate planning benefits.

Today we live in a separated state and church country, where the secular is separated from the sacred. The central problem with the gay marriage issue is that it is trying to “marry” the secular with the sacred. Marriage is not a secular insitution and really never has been. Though our government recognizes it as a legal relationship, the truth is that marriage is a sacred institution. God created marriage and it belongs to Him, not to the state. Therefore, if the state wants to create a similar secular institution and call it something else, then that perhaps would be an acceptable alternative. Though Christians may not be comfortable with a secular version of marriage, at least we can be satisfied that we have protected the sacred version of it.

Given this, in my estimation, the best solution to this impasse is for the state to leave marriage as sacred and belonging to the Church and instead establish a comparative secular institution or “civil union” for two people so that they can enjoy legal benefits similar to marriage but leave the sacred institution for and the biblical definition of marriage to the Church.

On a final note, let me just say this. If gay marriage advocates are singularly interested in marriage and continue to press for the “right” to marry and are not satisfied with civil recognition, then we are left with the impression that their real intention is to somehow undermine the institution of marriage, both sacred and secular versions, for everyone. This would be like the child throwing a tantrum and declaring that if he can’t have something, then no one will. This could very well be the case and we will see in days to come if it is indeed true. The litmus test will be if the gay marriage advocates are satisfied with civil recognition.

Furthermore, if they continue to press for marriage status, then that could also suggest that what they are really seeking is not the equality of marriage but actually the symbolic blessing upon their union. In a way then, they would effectively be trying to get not only the country’s approval but the Church’s as well. As we have already established, they may get the former but will not get the latter.

Whatever the outcome of this angry debate, my hope and prayer is that the vitriolic exchanges would be put aside and that both sides would come to the table to discuss viable solutions to this impasse. And, even if we can’t have agreement, then at least we can have peace.