A Defense of “Religious Conservatives”

   A Defense of “Religious Conservatives”

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Nov. 5, 2022

            “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide / In the strife of truth with falsehood / For the good or evil side.” – James Russell Lowell, 1845 

            Not all conservatives are “religious,” though many are. The following argument is about political conservatives who are people of faith. I will yield to common English usage and refer to them as religious conservatives.

             Religious conservatives who oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage are often labeled homophobes. This charge makes little sense, a phobia being an anxiety disorder or a deep fear. It is unlikely that true people of faith are afraid of homosexuals or that they deal with anxiety all because of someone’s sexuality. For the last few decades religious conservatives have been given a bum rap in regard to sexuality issues. Maligned and misrepresented, they have been characterized as bigots. They have been taunted for not “changing with the times,” an ill-informed phrase since homosexuality was widespread in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, and also practiced in Israel. There’s nothing new about it except the LGBTQ Lobby’s success in permeating our schools.

            While the issues of same-sex marriage and transgender politics are at the fore of our debate, homosexuality itself constitutes the heart of the sexual chaos that benights America. There is a reason religious conservatives are deeply concerned about the chaos. That reason is the Bible. Christian conservatives throughout the nation do not and cannot ignore the fact that the Bible forbids homosexuality. In the Old Testament, Genesis chapters 10-19 deal with Abraham’s nephew Lot, and how Lot “pitched his tent toward Sodom.”  Chapter 19 tells of the men of Sodom who went to Lot’s house seeking homosexual relations with his two male guests. They demanded that Lot bring them out so that they might “know them carnally.” Sodom became known as a vile place of sexual perversion. Religious conservatives also know that Leviticus 18:22 reads, “You shall not lie with mankind as with womankind.”

            The New Testament also prohibits homosexuality. In the epistles of Romans, First Corinthians, and First Timothy, the Apostle Paul is clear about the matter. One of the clearest prohibitions is found in Romans, chapter 1, which speaks of “men with men doing that which is unseemly.” Those who do not believe the Bible are free to say so and most certainly do say so, but those who do believe it should be expected to obey it and to resist public policy that violates it. It isn’t hate but devotion to their faith that leads religious conservatives to their position on sexuality.

 Yet, some incredibly argue that at a point religious beliefs should be set aside. As Senator Diane Feinstein said scornfully to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “The dogma lives loudly within you.” Ms. Barrett was “too Catholic” for the Senator just as religious conservatives are “too religious” for many progressives.

            Religious conservatives are also troubled by transgender ideology.  One reason is the Biblical declaration, “Male and female created He them.” Another is common sense: men can’t be women and women can’t be men, no matter how they mutilate themselves or attempt to manipulate nature. So argues Dr. Paul McHugh, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.

Religious conservatives also point to the great harm done by transgender policy such as impairment wrought by transgender drugs and surgeries. They see athletics being gutted by the transgender bandwagon. The Boston Marathon’s decision to create a new category called “non-binary runners” is one example. Marathon applicants no longer must identify themselves as male or female.

             Guess how religious conservatives feel about drag queen hour for school children. Don’t tell me it isn’t spreading. Hatred of the natural is now an obsession fed by corporations, academia, Hollywood, the media, the LGBTQ Lobby, and even many pulpits.

            Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the nation’s sexual chaos is the re-defining of marriage and family. Before the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, marriage was about children and their need of a mother and a father, which is to say a family. Since Obergefell v. Hodges, gay and lesbian “marriage,” in which children are irrelevant, has unraveled the institution of marriage. This unraveling, coupled with the blasé view of babies held by abortion defenders, means that children simply are no longer considered blessings from God. Of course progressives are always into dismantling institutions which formerly gave us meaning and structure.

            Religious conservatives are conservatives of the heart. Stirred politically by Irish Catholic Pat Buchanan in 1992 at the Republican National Convention and buoyed by their deep love of God and country, they will definitely be praying for the upcoming election and for a nation whose current leaders have forsaken honored truths and abandoned reality.

 

Roger Hines

November 3, 2022