NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–A logical case against the ordinance that would add “sexual orientation” as a protected class of persons to Nashville’s civil rights laws needs to be made.
Those in the homosexual community would like to equate homosexuality as the moral equivalent of race and the societal equivalent of heterosexual marriage. But this can be argued against on many angles.
A moral argument against protecting sexual orientation as a class of people can find its moorings in natural philosophy. In brief, homosexuality is immoral because it is unnatural. The moral argument suggests that protecting a class of persons that is unnatural is illogical and does not contribute to the overall moral quality of an orderly society.
This moral argument coincides with the argument made from a sociological standpoint: Homosexuality does not contribute to societal structures that serve as the infrastructure of wholesome community, particularly the societal unit we call the family. While the homosexual community would argue it can demonstrate what it means to be family, such an argument seems odd since it is in the traditional family unit that children are conceived, birthed and nurtured within the context of the male and female role models we call mom and dad.
The physiological argument is a rather conflicted one. To date, no genetic reasons have been set forth as the “natural cause” for homosexuality. The 1993 study by Dean Hammer in the journal, Science, suggesting that there may be a genetic cause has been debunked. There is no proof that homosexuals are “born that way.”
Lack of scientific proof throws the issue into the hands of the psychologist. At best, the psychologist can say only that certain environmental factors may contribute to a person’s decision to live such a lifestyle. This means that homosexuality is the unnatural result of inappropriate environmental issues, not natural causes, a result that can be reversed with therapy.
The constitutional argument is a rather powerful one. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled against the spirit of such an ordinance, i.e. the recent Boy Scout case. The Constitution does make certain guarantees of natural rights that are due all people. These protections, however, do not call for a wholesale affirmation of questionable classes of people like homosexuals.
Further, ordinances like the one before the Metro Council violate the constitutional litmus test of infringement. Codifying homosexuality as a protected class of persons on the same basis as race infringes upon the rights of those who disagree with such a lifestyle by making them indirectly affirm said lifestyle for fear of violating laws based upon an errant interpretation of the Constitution.
Finally, scriptural and theological reasons form the basis of the opinion of the vast majority of those who oppose this ordinance. Theologically speaking, the Bible states that intimacy and the family pathos are to be experienced between a male and a female — not between same-sex partners. Leviticus 18:22 notes the following prohibition against homosexual acts, “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination.”
The homosexual community is sly in progressing its agenda. It realizes that for someone to be viewed as discriminatory or anti-family offends most reasonable people. It also knows that it must downplay the unseemly acts of their sexual behavior. Speaking in terms of equal rights and protections and of redefining the family unit to include homosexual marriage makes such a lifestyle seem more palatable.
Passage of this ordinance would simply be the first step in a series of steps that would have the citizens of Nashville affirming a lifestyle that is unnatural, chosen and deviant.
–30–
Shrum is the pastor of Inglewood Baptist Church in Nashville.
