Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, why should we as American Christians patiently, graciously oppose the gay agenda despite the recent Supreme Court ruling declaring gay marriage constitutional? This past June, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. That the United States Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Now, Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, and in it he said this, and I quote, No longer may this liberty be denied.

Once again, discovering, finding liberties in the Constitution that are non-existent. And Justice Scalia pointed this out, too, in his minority opinion, his opposing opinion. But Kennedy goes on to say, No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were, unquote. Well, Justice Kennedy's sentimental, insipid thoughts, I submit to you, far, far subpar thinking for a Supreme Court justice.

His sentimental, insipid thoughts are so full of fallacies that we must postpone a critique of them for these points that I have in detail below. But just suffice it to say for now that Justice Kennedy personifies the perspective of many in our culture today.

The definition of marriage for them begins not with first principles that are objective and rooted in time-tested norms of faith and culture and society, but rather for Justice Kennedy and those like him rooted in warm, fuzzy feelings of perhaps a few individuals who may or may not be making a real contribution to society by doing so, and more on this later, and who also then may be bringing blessing from God by doing so, or perhaps, consider with me, judgment from God by doing so, and more on this a little bit later. But others have reflected on this as well.

I think the thoughts of Dr. Albert Moeller, who is president of Southern Baptist Seminary, are very pertinent here. And he says, and I quote Dr. Albert Moeller, the Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the land, and its decisions cannot be appealed to a higher court of law. But the Supreme Court, like every human institution and individual, will eventually face two higher courts. Yes, Dr. Moeller is so spot on here, parenthetically, and I'll bring out some of these points as well.

But Dr. Moeller goes on to say, the first is the court of history, which will wonder a judgment that I believe will embarrass this court and reveal its dangerous trajectory. The precedents and arguments set forth in this decision cannot be limited to the right of same-sex couples to marry if individual autonomy and equal protection mean that same-sex couples cannot be denied what is now defined as a fundamental right of marriage, that others will arrive to make the same argument. This court will find itself in a trap of its own making and one that will bring great harm to this nation and its families.

The second court we must all face is the court of divine judgment. For centuries, marriage ceremonies in the English-speaking world have included the admonition that what God has put together, no human being or human court should tear us under. That is exactly what the Supreme Court of the United States has now done. Unquote from Dr. Albert Moeller. Very profound words with which I am in complete agreement.

Well, let me expand upon these places as well by making three points concerning the gay agenda. There is a theological argument against the gay agenda. There is a demographic argument and a cultural argument. You expect me to make a theological argument, but there are important demographic and cultural reasons why the gay agenda is very dangerous, and of course which I saw no reflection upon whatsoever in the opinion handed down. Well, let me make these one at a time.

First, the one you might expect me to make, a theological argument. And that theological argument runs along this course. Number one, there is one biblical model for family and marriage. The Bible outlines one biblical model for family and marriage. Since the creation of the world, God has made man in his image.

The Bible says when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, he created them. And he blessed them and named them man when they were created, unquote. Dear listener, one male, one female constitute the whole image of God. Nowhere in Scripture is the image of God put forward as two men or two women, nor is it one man and plural wives or one woman and a beast or one man and a beast.

It is always only one man, the husband, and one woman, the wife. Any other configuration by definition disfigures the image of God in man. Think of this. Under this point, then there are three subordinate points linked very closely to it. And that is A under one.

The covenant of marriage underlies this principle. There is a covenant of marriage that underlies this one biblical model, one male and one female. Now, what verse is quoted in Christian marriage services most often? Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate, said Jesus himself. Marriage for centuries has been between one man and one woman, precisely because of the words of God in Genesis and Jesus in the Gospels. These are not merely nice words to say at a solemn service. They reflect, rather, the image of God in man. Note, a man, a man, singular, shall leave his mother and father and hold fast to his wife, singular.

The biblical math is inevitable. The two, one man plus one woman, shall become one flesh. This one flesh relationship is emblematic of the one image of God that man constitutes by definition. And how beautiful and how profound it is, dear listener. The sexual union physically pictures this one flesh relationship.

The one name, the wife takes on the name of the husband, pictures the single identity of this one flesh relationship. So, one can understand the gay community's fierce, hysterical response, right, to the church's assertion. Because the sexual act of one man and one man with another man, or one woman and another woman together, is offensive to God and offensive to the Christian order and the covenant order of marriage.

And one can understand the fierce, hysterical response that gays give to this graphic statement of the fact, since it clearly pictures not only the beauty of the heterosexual union, but also the ugly and unnatural union of the homosexual union, the physical union of them. Well, then, B, under number one, the covenant of marriage pictures the union of Christ and his church. This is one of the sub points under Christian marriage, biblical marriage. That is, the covenant of marriage pictures the union of Christ and his church as well.

But how many people married today realize that their marriage is larger than just the two persons who compose it? And I've counseled and married dozens of couples, and I hear something like this repeatedly. Our love is between us, Pastor. It's about us and no one else. If you examine the Bible, however, you begin to see that a husband and a wife are living out in miniature the bond between Christ and his church on the larger stage of history.

This is true whether you want it to be or not. It is true whether you are aware of it or not. And you may scoff or scorn or cast skepticism upon this idea, but it is still true and wired into the very fabric of the institution of marriage itself. Gravity is a law which must be obeyed, isn't it? The law of inertia is a law which must be obeyed whether we think the magician's wand will absolve us of it or not.

So God has constructed the covenant of marriage that it is meant to picture Christ and his church regardless of what we think. God has made it so, and he will require it at the judgment seat from every couple ever married. How true to that model were you? It is a wondrous mystery that is beautiful and profound when it is contemplated as God intended it. The Apostle Paul says, This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and his church.

That is, marriage does. The marriage between the one woman and the one man. The mystery of marriage refers to Christ and his church. The husband pictures Christ as the head of the church. The Bible says the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.

And the wife, alternatively, pictures Christ's body, the church. And the Bible says, As the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Then, together, one man representing Christ as the head and one woman representing his bride as the body. These symbolize Christ and his church. This is the model.

Can you see how anything else distorts it? Two men in marriage are a disfigurement. Two women in marriage are a rejection of that model. One man in plural wives destroys the numerical model. And the profound mystery is, by definition, one man and one woman symbolizing the one Christ and the one church.

And God will hold every couple married responsible for their fidelity to this model. Well, this is the theological argument, but there are also two other arguments that should also be made. You can reject the theological model if you so care to. You do so at your peril. But logically, reasonably, you cannot reject these secular, let me put quotation marks around it, the secular arguments as well.

And these cannot be gainsay. So, let me make a point here that the biblical model for marriage, when it is abandoned, a downward demographic spiral ensues. This is the second argument I want to make, a demographic argument. That is, when the biblical model for marriage is abandoned, a downward demographic spiral ensues. It's an unalterable fact, and it's little considered as well in the current debate over homosexual marriage.

Demography is the study of societal fluctuations in births, deaths, and population shifts. Population shifts, excuse me. The demographic argument. Demography figures in the gay and lesbian arguments as well. So, make no mistake.

Any society that encourages or passively tolerates homosexual marriage will see the ineluctable decline in birth rates that will eventually contribute to the death of that society. It's true for a number of reasons. The demographic argument is true for a number of reasons. And A, then, under two, the demographic argument, gay and lesbian marriages are, by definition, unfruitful when considered in themselves. The Bible says that God expects godly offspring.

How can homosexual marriages produce offspring, by definition? Try as they might, the union of Adam and Steve, that is, a homosexual marriage, will issue. Not in seminated ovaries, but just the opposite. No, try as they might, the union of Eve and Genevieve, that is, a lesbian marriage, will issue only in an unfulfilled, unfertilized ovum. Lesbian gays cannot self-propagate, can they?

It is biologically impossible for such unions to be demographically productive in and of themselves. They cannot produce pagan offspring, much less godly offspring. There are, of course, child-rearing options for these couples. It's not to say that there are not child-rearing options for them. There are.

For example, the Dr. Scher Fertility Clinic Center for Reproductive Medicine lists several of these options, and you can check out the Dr. Scher Fertility Clinic Center for Reproductive Medicine. They have a website. They give these options for gay and lesbian couples, and that is adoption, of course, foster care, in vitro fertilization with donor sperm. That's the way that a lesbian couple, indeed, can find impregnated wombs, is, of course, with donor sperm. Then there's donor egg IVs with surrogacy for male couples, or in vitro fertilization with surrogacy for male couples.

Then there's traditional surrogacy for male couples. Then there's donor in utero insemination and embryo adoption, of course. All these are options given for gay and lesbian couples. But besides the steep legal hurdles that many of these options face in many states, and there are many states that are opposed to these kinds of options, there is still the ultimate Darwinian hurdle, I submit to you, and that is reproductive inertia. There is, amongst the gay and lesbian community, reproductive inertia.

Even if we're to double the number of options available for the wonders of reproducing our kind to the gay and lesbian community, they still have little or no desire to do so. Currently, for example, the stats bear this out for us. For example, currently, 33% of lesbian and 20% of gay households have children being reared in them. It is important to note that most of these, even, that's far below heterosexual couples, it is important to note that most of these, even, are from previous heterosexual relationships. Even at this, only 50% of lesbian women currently even express a desire to parent.

It doesn't mean they're doing so. Only 50% have a desire to do so, and not necessarily with a product of their own womb. There simply is no incentive to create offspring with their own equipment. Much less godly offspring. So, taken with the spiritual and emotional aberrations that characterize many in the lesbian and gay community, this one points again to the selfish, self-centered, and narcissistic nature of gay and lesbian relationships.

That is, reproductive inertia. Well, secondly, then, we also see that gay, and why they contribute to demographics' downward spirals is that gay and lesbian marriages, by definition, subtract productive parents from the pool. Gay and lesbian marriages, by definition, subtract productive parents from the pool. Oh, yes, and there's a geometric regression that happens here in this case as well. Every gay couple subtracts two potential husbands and the children that they would have spawned with their seed, and every lesbian couple subtracts two potential wives and the children their wombs would generate.

So make no mistake about this, dear listener. This fact has a profound impact upon the demographic future of the United States of America. Currently, the United States has a birth rate below replacement level. The numbers are, anything under 2.1 children per woman in any given country is considered sub-replacement. Just to replace the people that are currently walking the face of the earth, 2.1 children per woman is required.

Currently, it is now 1.89 children per woman in the United States, though it is not as bad as other nations, and one resource I would encourage you to check on this is the book How Civilizations Die by David P. Goldman, one of the most important books published in 2011, but it details many of these stats I'm drawing upon. How Civilizations Die is the title of his book by David P. Goldman, and there is indeed a demographic argument to this, especially to gay and lesbian marriages. Eventually, all other things being equal, any given population with that kind of birth rate would dwindle into insignificance and or extinction.

So, while the gay and lesbian marriage subtraction of reproductive peoples is only one factor in this equation, other things include women's liberation, which postpones child-rearing for a woman's career, for example, or abortion. Abortion also contributes, then, to a demographic downward spiral. Then there's the feminization of men, the decline of religious faith. Goldman, in particular, in his book How Civilizations Die, makes a point of when you have a decline in religious faith, you also have a decline in birth rates, and he makes that connection.

Well, while only one factor in this equation, the expansion and contraction of gay marriages will have an impact upon this figure. The more reproducing couples you have in any given society, the greater the expansion of its population. What would be the demographic world if any given individual from a homosexual couple instead married a partner from a lesbian couple in a traditional marriage? Well, the results would be exponential, I submit.

that multiple children from these marriages would marry and create multiple children and further marriages in an expanding family tree that would mean a growth of the American population rather than a shrinking and withering of it. But, as it stands, there will be an inverse exponential collapse at this rate. We subtract from the potential number of population those which these couples would otherwise have produced. A society, I submit to you, gets the future it deserves, and we're getting the demographic future that we deserve, dear listener.

Now, I understand that this demographic argument is considerably more abstract than ones usually put forward by either side in the debate on gay marriage. Why? It does not have, of course, the emotional glitz and charge that we only want our civil rights under the Constitution to marry. Lesbians and gays have a right to be happy, don't we? We can't help how God made us.

These have an emotional tug upon us, do they not? But, nevertheless, this demographic argument is not any less real for being abstract. The acceptance and growth and expansion of gay and lesbian marriage will contribute to a demographic death spiral in the United States. Well, my third argument that I would like to make is a cultural argument. That is, when the biblical model for marriage is abandoned, a cultural death spiral ensues as well.

It's a corollary, really, of the demographic argument. But, when I hear the emotional appeal, what does it hurt if a gay couple marries? I immediately respond, it spells the death of a life culture. In the end, it is impossible for a culture of life to coexist with a culture of death. Lesbian and gay culture, such as it is, is by definition a culture of death, in part because of the demographic spiral that I outlined above.

That is, it cannot self-propagate. It is further a culture of death because it is by definition, it must flourish at the expense of a straight culture. Lesbian and gay culture must flourish at the expense of a straight culture. It is by nature parasitic and will and must eventually kill the host if that host culture encourages and allows it to flourish. This implicit conflict, and it is an implicit conflict, goes to the heart of what culture is.

Edward Taylor defines, in fact, his definition has been classic through the centuries. He says that culture is the complex whole of belief, art, morals, law, and custom acquired by man as a member of society, unquote. This complex whole that he talks about of all that we are and love wants to be communicated to the next generation, too. This is the impulse of humanity. It's no less true of lesbian and gay culture than it is of straight culture.

It is the nature of culture to be preserved and protected and propagated to the next generation. Now, as Goldman puts it in his book, he says, individual human existence looks forward to the continuation of the culture that nurtures, sustains, and transmits our contribution to further future generations, unquote. It is the human impulse to propagate and continue one's culture. Lesbian and gay culture has within it the same impulse, to be continued as much as straight culture does. This is where the conflict occurs.

How is lesbian and gay culture transmitted to the next generation? What of lesbian and gay culture is communicated is another pertinent question. Note these points under this question. First of all, the very subjects of the next lesbian and gay generation must be recruited from this straight generation. Here's where cultural conflict occurs because lesbian and gay culture other lesbian and gay populations are not naturally born and naturally generated by other lesbian and gay couples.

No, they must be recruited from a straight generation. Have you ever thought about this? It's not a passive question of mere toleration. How do lesbian and gays propagate? We've already observed that self-propagation is impossible.

By definition, homosexual and lesbian marriages are unfruitful. Whence tomorrow's lesbian and gays then? There's only one place. From despised breeders, as they call us. From despised breeders.

You are looked at as mere fodder for future gay and lesbian predations. Where else are they going to get their next generation? From cabbage patches? From storks? No.

From breeders. That is heterosexual couples. They are the only ones who produce children consistently and prolifically. You and your family are the only and exclusive fruitful harvest field from which subjects may be plucked and harvested. If the lesbian and gay culture is to continue to the next generation, it must entice, capture, and train an army of socially conditioned children to become lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered.

This is why you see LGBTG apologists stridently advocate for the strategies by which they do recruit and seduce the next generation. For example, lesbian and gays commandeer the school systems. Behold the common core. In the name of tolerance, they indoctrinate the minds of the bulk of straight society to passively accept lesbian and gay culture while aggressively suggesting to vulnerable, weak adolescents that they are lesbian or gay. How many marginal kids would go straight, indeed, if not for this kind of societal and cultural pressure?

They also, the lesbian and gay cultures, also co-opt the culture. Why are gay characters portrayed sympathetically in TV sitcoms and in movies? Why do musicians increasingly make out with one another and sing queer music? Why do news commentators and political pundits now openly advocate for tolerance and acceptance? Oh, dear listener.

Also, lesbian and gay is increasingly criminal dissent, do they not? When all else fails, shut down, shut down dissent. You pass city ordinances against discrimination. You protest hysterically against any opinion that disagrees. You lobby for legislation that criminalizes any political opinion that will dissent from doctrinaire opinion.

Oh, because there is nowhere else to go but to the breeder of straight culture for the subjects of the next generation of gay and lesbian culture. Well, then, this culture is by nature parasitic, needing the host of breeders upon which to draw to constitute its next cultural generation. Dear listener, they would be nowhere without your children. They would have no one upon which to feed to supply that next cultural generation of lesbians and gays. We must also observe that in this cultural argument that lesbian and gay culture behaves like all cultures in accordance with its own need to survive.

Straight mainstream culture is so naive. We assume that gay and lesbian couples merely want to be left alone to live their lives in peace and fulfillment just like any ordinary heterosexual couple. How naive. Awake, America. The agenda is far more aggressive.

And I quote here Paula Edelbrecht of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. And she says, and I quote, Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so. Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process transforming the very fabric of society, unquote. How naive we are. Are we not?

If you think that lesbian gays are at present hysterical and aggressive in promoting their agenda, they have only begun. It will never stop until your sons are queer, your daughters are lesbian, and your dog partnered with a differently specied human. Dear brother and sister, what are we to do? Well, we must also demand and pray for a complete spiritual reformation in the United States of America. Christ is the beginning, the middle, and the end of our hope for redemption.

And only as we return to him as our head will we as his body remain in fidelity to the model of marriage set before us. Pray indeed for these things. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And we meet for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sundays at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. You may call us at 5-2-3-0-1.