Christians have been tempted to give in on issues of sexual purity since the sexual revolution of the sixties. Part of the temptation has been from our own sexual desires—quite simply the desire to have sex without the limitations of marriage in a culture that no longer looks down on doing so. The subtler temptation, however, has come from a “doesn’t affect others” argument which goes like this: if people want to do something in the privacy of their own home, and it doesn’t hurt anyone, we should let them. It’s an appeal to American individualism and freedom. As recently as last year I saw this argument in a movie (Swing Vote). The main character says about homosexual marriage, “What people do in the privacy of their own home is their own business” or something like that. The lie here, however, is in believing that no one is harmed by sexual sin, whether heterosexual or homosexual. And the greatest hypocrisy as seen today is in homosexuals fighting for rights which will clearly have an impact on many around them. To demand the right to marriage is to demand that Christians who takes the Bible seriously set aside that belief. More importantly, for homosexual couples to demand rights in regard to adopting or in other ways having children not their own is to ignore the effects their lifestyle may have on children.

The old argument will simply not work anymore. Whether the relationships are heterosexual or homosexual, what people do in the privacy of their home isn’t private anymore—it is in the press, the entertainment industry, the courts, the legislative bodies and the schools. What’s left for people to claim is that alternative sexual lifestyles do not cause harm. They are wrong.

There are reasons we need to continue to fight the fight against all sexual sin which will be ignored by people apart from their being converted to a Bible based, classical Christianity: God says it’s sin; sexual sinners who are unrepentant will go to hell; God’s wrath will be against a people who openly support sexual sin. For Christians this should be reason enough. For the rest of America it won’t. And so we need to emphasize another reason: heterosexual behavior outside of marriage is wrong and homosexual behavior is wrong, and we must continue to champion these truths because these sins harm children.

Last year the report that 25 percent of high school girls in this country have a sexually transmitted disease should have been a wake up call! But discussions about the epidemic of STD’s in America are almost completely absent in the media (probably because to admit the problem is to admit—by the consequences—that promiscuous sex is wrong). I think it’s hard to argue from these statistics that sex outside of marriage doesn’t cause harm.

Infidelity leading to single parenthood (or even the choice to become a single parent through in vitro fertilization using anonymously donated sperm via the belief that setting the norms of marriage and parenting aside is perfectly acceptable) is also harming children. Boys raised in single-parent homes are twice as likely to wind up in prison as their two parent counterparts. Girls who, before the age of six, see their fathers leave their home are six times more likely to get pregnant as teens. A study in Sweden found that children in single parent households are twice as likely to attempt suicide and 50 percent more likely to succeed. In contrast, children living with married parents are not only better adjusted psychologically and socially, but they are also more successful academically, regularly scoring higher in reading in math than single parent children.¹

Now comes the most current issue: homosexual marriage. If marriage is redefined in America then children will be affected. Legalizing homosexual marriage will mean permanently allowing children to be adopted by homosexual couples nationwide. Children who have grown up with two moms or dads are just beginning to speak out about the harm such relationships caused them. According to one report, adult children unhappy with their experiences with same-sex parenting refer to themselves as “queer spawn” while donor children also unhappy with experimental new family models refer to themselves as “lopsided” or “half-adopted” and long to know who their fathers are.

Why should we continue the fight for traditional sexual morality and marriage? The answer America needs to hear is this: for the sake of the children.

¹ My research for these statistics and other elements in this article is a December 9, 2006 article in World Magazine entitled “Experimental Kids.”Return to text