Here is a critique about me and my essay on the Collegedale pro-gay ordinance is posted at Chattanooga News & Review on Facebook. A response follows.
Lana Sutton: The dark obsession of so many people with gays really scares me. Their obsessive and controlling behavior always extends beyond the gays to telling the rest of us how to live, how to worship, how to vote, etc.
David, why do you care so much about what gay people do, including what they do in their bedrooms? Don’t you have other more important things to worry about than keeping two other consenting from enjoying the same privileges as you?
I think everyone should have a right to find someone they love, of consenting age, regardless of their gender, without the busy bodies trying to stop them from getting the same privileges. How about instead of stopping people who love each other from being able to live openly, we stop people from living lies of convenience and conformity? What if we stop people from killing each other in wars, not loving each other in marriages?
Can’t you see that forcing people to live a lie is a much worse reality for all of us, a prison of lies. Gays didn’t choose to be gay, any more than you chose to be straight. They’re not obsessing over what you do in your bedroom.
And no I don’t want a government so big it can legally discriminate against gays, women, blacks, people who question authority, etc.
A universal duty: Reflect God’s standard for loving neighbor
David Tulis: As a Christian, I seek to reflect the will and standards of God the creator. He has given to mankind a written revelation, and my goal is always to accurately represent what the God of the holy scriptures demands of His creatures, all of whom are moral beings with obligations to Him. God requires holiness in all things. He requires it even in the fulfillment of sexual desires. In this area prone to temptation and selfishness,
He commands self-government, self-denial, delay in gratification, lifelong promise, the prospect of children, the building of private estates and capital and many blessings of home life.
My concern in the Collegedale gay vote is to seek to reflect how a biblical standard addresses the underlying circumstances of that vote, namely the presumptive entering the estate of marriage of two women. Women are sisters before God, or mothers and daughters, or aunts and nieces, but not husband and wife.
The category of husband and wife do not belong to man to recreate as he wishes. It belongs to God, and is part of His claim upon the Earth, delegated first to Adam in the naming of things. No man can marry another man and call himself a husband with a wife.
We are not free to rename or redefine things hostile to the way God names or defines them. We are not free to sit on the Creator’s lap and slap His face with our own claims to reality.
My interest in such matters is to suggest that God ordains marriage as between one man and one woman, and that it is for His glory and for the good of the parties. The regime God has imposed on reality stands, even though individuals, nations, cities defy it.
I don’t presume to enter your bedroom, or S.D.’s. My eyes are not the ones with which you need to concern yourself. The ones that matter are those of God, who looks into every heart, into every private chamber, into every secret. I don’t sit in judgment on any person. But revelation, the Bible, directs me to shine a favorable light on its standard, and on the Word’s judgment of sin and rebellion. We are all sinners and have come short of the glory of God. The first duty of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. We fail daily in our duty, you, Mr. D. and me.
What God promises through the oracles of the church and the pulpit is mercy. That mercy forgives all manner of sin, personal sin, sins of thought, sins of coveting, sins of envy, public sins as well. Mercy is nothing we have any right to or claim upon; it is freely given by God, through the Holy Spirit, in the name of Christ, to those whom He chooses to sovereignly give it.
The scriptures don’t propose anyone live a lie. They propose that everyone live a life of repentance, obedience and faithfulness to God. To know how requires submission of one’s self to God’s perfect and righteous standard, alone under which we shall have prosperity and happiness.
