Reeder: Australian same-sex marriage survey a ‘profile in cowardice’ not courage
- Dr. Harry Reeder: The sexual revolution an ‘all-out assault’ on our culture
- British government resignations signal problems
- What Alan Dershowitz’ shunning says about snowflake culture and intolerance for debate
- Why the Supreme Court’s labor union decision is a win for freedom and education
- Parents denied access to public school sex education materials is shocking government overreach
- Leadership crucial in the church, life
- Reflecting on Independence Day and its meaning
- Justice Kennedy’s retirement and what it could mean for the direction of the country
- How the church and strong families can help adolescents deal with depression
- Should sex offenders be able to adopt?
- What the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly prayer gets wrong
- Is it just? Farm Bill requires able-bodied on food stamps to work part-time or get job-training
- Is Alabama-founded PCA church encouraging gay people to identify by sin?
- Alabama pastor to the suicidal: ‘Banish the thought of destruction. It’s not the answer’, ‘Many’ of us want to help
- How to think about ‘human rights council’ and elitist concept of abortion as ‘human right’
- Alabama pastor’s analysis of immigrant parent-child border separation controversy
- James Comey echo of J. Edgar Hoover — amassing power, declaring himself moral authority in FBI
- Historic North Korea Summit explainer and backstory
- News Fatigue? How to think about abundance of 24-hr ‘news’
- Where do you turn when your church strays from your faith?
- Unreal — Medical how-to book for counseling ‘religious’ women that abortion is okay
- Remembering RFK
- It’s inexcusable Clinton didn’t personally apologize to Lewinsky
- Planned Parenthood ignores crime in singular pursuit of death culture
- Do we really want a society that says ANY sexual behavior is fine?
- Reflections from Israel — and how it has changed in the past 30 years
- How to think about ‘aging pastors’ and ‘scarcity’ of millennials in ministry
- What does Christian liberty mean?
- Oh boy … Americans don’t think they sin very often
- How ‘church growth at all costs’ mentality weakens worship
- Should Facebook be the ‘new church’ and ultimate hate speech judge?
- How to think about Memorial Day
- When did marriage, parenthood become about self-fulfillment?
- Government branches must hold each other accountable, not circumvent each other
- Why Christians should visit holy lands
- Making sense of Trump’s negotiations
- Why Trump was right to move embassy to Jerusalem
- Stay married through ‘hurricane’ years, struggles — it’s worth it
- Insanity: NYC mayor wants to enable drug use
- Why it’s crucial that parents examine college faculties
- Why Marxism is cool again — with people who don’t know of its horrors
- A pastor’s perspective on Alabama Attorney General’s ‘Faith Forum’ at Briarwood
- Does archaeology prove or disprove the Bible?
- Don’t get hung up on church numbers — focus on church health, not size
- In the U.K., you only have value if you are wanted
- Startling number of Christians are persecuted around the world
- What is North Korea’s motivation?
- PARENTS: Who is teaching your child, the iPad, the teacher you disagree with, or you?
- Alfie Evans and the ever-encroaching overreach of the state, diminishment of parental rights
- Randa Jarrar and free speech
- Proposed California law will lead to persecution of Christians, possible outlawing of Bible sales
- How should Christians think about Trump’s North Korea stance?
- Barbara Bush and the unique legacies First Ladies leave
- Paul Ryan is understandably ‘bone-tired’ — but I do wish he could stay
- Why the Syrian strike was justified
- Christian colleges: Will you fold under cultural pressures or actually BE what you say you are?
- Transgender chaos playing out as predicted
- Does Facebook smoosh conservative posts? YES. But regulation is not the answer
- What Toys ‘R Us, colleges, and social security have in common
- College class gets it terribly wrong. Christians aren’t privileged — Christianity produces privileges for everyone
- Gender chaos leads to societal chaos
- Cultural Marxism: Do you know what it is and how to fight it?
- How parents can combat Planned Parenthood’s shocking deviant sex education
- Sorry and all, but yes there is a Heaven and Hell
- When elected officials campaign on promises they don’t keep
- Does archeology prove the Bible is true?
- Are the millions of lives lost to abortion less important than lives lost to gun violence?
- We must not sacrifice consistent morality for political pragmatism
- Why do Christians call Christ’s death ‘Good Friday’?
- Single parenthood may be a heroic struggle, but it’s not ideal and shouldn’t be promoted
- Freedoms of speech, religion go hand in hand and are being threatened — even in Christian college classes
- States are trying to criminalize the free speech of those seeking to protect unborn life
- Christian movie revenue shocks Hollywood, blows past estimates — here’s why you need to see it
- Care about free speech? Keep your eyes on Supreme Court dealing with California abortion law
- Why pornography is far from ‘victimless’ and how to quit using it
- Cultural Marxists are using schools, courts to target Christianity
- No, Joy Behar, it’s not a ‘mental illness’ when the Lord speaks to us through his Word
- Despite what Washington Post writer says, Down Syndrome children are only undesirable to selfish, arrogant people
- Facebook’s ‘fact checker’ says the killing of unborn babies in abortion is a ‘disputed fact’
- Be sure your (Twitter) sins will find you out
- Reasons for pro-lifers to rejoice — and double-down — on abortion issues
- How to debate with decorum … and why profane, vulgar arguments reveal weak arguments & minds
- WAKE UP: Pornography is not victimless — it destroys lives and kills people
- Persecution, violence against Christians significantly increased world-wide in 2017
- 3 things contributing to the U.S. drop in life expectancy
- Gov’t attempted to silence this Christian who’s bringing Martin Luther King’s fight to modern times
- Iranian Christians fleeing persecution should get U.S. care and refuge
- What we can learn from the Alabama & Georgia quarterbacks’ post-game responses
- What does academic intolerance of real debate mean for free speech?
- Do you know the frivolous programs your tax dollars fund?
- Blaring Bannon coverage begs question: What’s happened to journalism?
- Call to Christians: Engage in politics & evangelism out of love for neighbor
- New York City votes to fine Biblical counselors for gender dysphoria therapy
- 10 campaign promises Donald Trump kept — or attempted to keep — in his first year
- Is it pointless to make New Year’s resolutions?
- The top 11 news, faith and culture headlines of 2017
- American attitudes about children contribute to our shrinking birth rate
- Here’s what Trump got right (and wrong) in his national security speech
- Tax reform explained: How it helps our culture, our families, our economics
- Advent and Christmas, ever wondered what’s the difference?
- Reformed Christians have lost one of their great theologians, pastors
- The 2 ungodly reactions to politics, current events that Christians must avoid
- Want our trust? The 7 things an elected official MUST do to gain it
- Christian voters faced 4 options in Senate race … only 1 is inexcusable, says Evangelical pastor
- Where the death culture leads: Lawsuits over disabled children who ‘should’ have been aborted
- What’s at stake in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision
- How to put Trump’s U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem in historical and biblical perspective
- Pastor Harry Reeder: There is hope and a way forward for the Matt Lauers in our lives
- Pastor Harry Reeder: If Supreme Court gets Colorado cake baker, same-sex marriage case wrong, it will be culture tipping point
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Liberal ‘Christianity’ is antithetical to Christianity
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Abortion industry ‘doulas’ try to normalize killing of unborn, but we know abortion is not normal
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Trump’s judicial nominee list shows his commitment to originalists and constitutionalists
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Some evangelicals disagree, but here’s why it’s good to emphasize church celebrations during Christmas
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Our military is weakening and here’s why we need it strong
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Why would we be surprised when culture lives out sexual sin it has promoted for years?
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Churches must stay on-mission as evangelists, not cultural acceptance-seekers
- Pastor Harry Reeder: The Museum of the Bible is a great idea…provided we don’t worship the Bible
- Harry Reeder on sexual reckoning: Our conscience tells us ‘something’s wrong here’ even while our culture promotes sin
- Reeder: We have to be honest despite history rewrites– Pilgrims gave thanks to God
- Reeder: It is ‘absolutely ludicrous’ to think a mother’s absence in crucial first 3 years has no effect
- Reeder: Australian same-sex marriage survey a ‘profile in cowardice’ not courage
- Reeder: Believers ‘speaking up’ made real difference in adoption tax credit provision
- Reeder: Secular culture wants more than ‘tolerance’, insists upon abortion and sexual anarchy ‘celebration’
- Reeder on Roy Moore chaos: ‘Do the next right thing’
- Reeder: Here’s what Christians should say when traditional marriage views are labeled ‘bigotry’
- Reeder on church leaders not meeting privately with the other sex: ‘I’ll take the criticism….I learned it from Billy Graham’
- Reeder on LGBTQ campus activists: ‘They don’t want to debate what a marriage actually is. They want to silence those they cannot answer.’
- Yes, it’s ridiculous there’s a new religion dedicated to AI….but here’s why it matters
- Feeling any Christmas guilt? Here’s the type you should ignore and the type you should face
- Reeder on Tuesday’s elections: ‘To see this as a referendum on Trump is overstating it’
- Two terminally-ill patients who refused assisted suicide to help others & show life’s sanctity
- Lots of older pastors, not many young ones — what’s going on?
- Commercial Surrogacy: The objectification of child-bearing
- Elitist ‘gender-isn’t-real’ culture has descended into sophisticated imbecility
- Chaplain who refused marriage retreat to same-sex couple is up against elite culture enforcers
- Sen. Booker’s grilling of Pompeo prime example of ‘religious test’ to exclude evangelical Christians from office
- GENDER ABSURDITY: A nation, led by pop culture, descends into chaos
- How culture rot happens: Unthinkable –> Laughable –> Thinkable –> Accepted
- How Christians should submit to the government’s law
- How to avoid going ‘wobbly’ on the truth
Listen to the 10 min. audio
Read the transcript:
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, today, let’s go Down Under. Australia World Magazine is reporting Australians have voted in favor of same-sex marriage in a postal survey that could lead to legal reforms before the end of the year.
Australia’s Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday of last week announced 61.6 percent of voters supported same-sex marriage while 38.4 percent voted against it. Nearly 80 percent of the more than 16 million registered voters cast ballots on the mail-in referendum.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called on lawmakers to heed the overwhelming result and commit to passing a same-sex marriage bill by the end of next month.
Liberal senator, Dean Smith, on Wednesday introduced a bill, but conservative lawmakers are pushing to amend the bill to allow businesses the right to refuse services such as photography, wedding cakes, etc.
DR. REEDER: It’s interesting, the two contrastive points of leadership. One is the present prime minister, Turnbull, who was an advocate of same-sex marriage but, instead of introducing the policy, having it debated and then voted on, he decided to go the route of opening up this for a referendum.
It was billed as a, quote, “survey,” but he said, “Let’s do it in such a way that we can get a sense of what the people want.” The leadership of today’s progressives is pretty much, “Let’s influence the culture, get the drumbeat of the culture, put our finger in the wind to get the direction of the culture and then get on the trajectory in order to profit from the direction of the culture.”
Of course, great leaders do not ride the trajectory of the culture to where it’s going – great leaders will get engaged in the culture to lead it where it ought to go.
At least Prime Minister Turnbull should have come out and said, “I believe that thousands of years of Western civilization was dead wrong when it said, A.), sex belongs in marriage and, B.), marriage is one man and one woman for one life. That actually, all of those years, we were closet bigots so now we have come to this enlightened position in life where we can call something a marriage when, in reality, by definition, that’s a myth.”
By definition, a marriage is a covenantal, monogamous, heterosexual, conjugal relationship designed to encourage the procreation and nurture of the next generation providing both a father and a mother.
You can’t have good families without a solid definition and practice of marriage. By the way, we have a lot of broken families where people are heroically attempting to do the best that they can and churches and individuals and extended families surround them to assist them.
However, still, the ideal is to pursue that which God has created: to function in a family foundationally secured by a marriage between a man and a woman that then sets up a father and mother relationship that every child needs to develop physically, socially, mentally and spiritually in a healthy way.
At least Prime Minister Turnbull should say, “All of that was bigotry. We are now enlightened so that we now have a marriage where conjugal cannot take place and procreation cannot take place without medical and cosmetic machinations. So now that we have redefined everything, we are the enlightened ones.”
At least he should have come out and tried to make the irrational rational in his leadership. On the contrary, he went to a survey.
Now, why did he do that? He knew that all the resources from outside of Australia and it’s documented, the unbelievable resources that were poured into Australia with one basic message, “Don’t be on the wrong side of history.
Look at the European nations, look at the United States, look at all of these countries that have now approved the irrational act of declaring same-sex relationships can be fulfilled in a marriage and that marriage can be defined as a same-sex relationship.”
They did all of that, they knew the resources would come, they came in, and, sure enough, they focused in the right areas demographically. In the rural areas and in the religious areas, they didn’t do much because they knew they were going to lose that vote and they did, about 30 to 40 percent of Australia has some profession of a sober commitment to a religious world and life view and that showed up in the vote.
Now, you have the movement legislatively covered by the, quote/unquote, “survey,” and this is a profile in cowardice, not a profile in courage.
And, in contrast to that is a previous prime minister, whose name was Tony Abbott, who came out and said, “If you vote for this, be assured you have just destroyed two things in our country. One will be freedom of speech and the other will be freedom of religion.”
Not only will churches be coerced to engage in this – and they will use government pressure to make churches instruments of conspiracy to make the unthinkable thinkable and then doable – and that is same-sex marriage. But they will also then bring it to bear upon people attempting to live out their faith in their lives such as photographers and bakers, as we have seen here in America.
They will now have to participate in what they believe is evil and sinful, and that is the blasphemy of reconstructing marriage into a mythical definition of same-sex marriage. Now, the power of the state will be brought to bear.
Finally, let me say this, Tom: this is exactly what the trajectory of the Western civilization is. It’s on a trajectory of God’s judgment as blasphemy continues and the sanctity of life being destroyed in the culture of death, the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of sexuality within marriage.
God is very clear about this. In the Book of Leviticus, Chapters 18 and 19, God says this to his people: “Do not become like the nations that surround you.” The pressure on Australia was, “The other nations have done it. Now you need to do it.” God said to his people, “Don’t become like the other nations and don’t engage in their sexual immorality and perversion.”
And He says this, “If you become like the other nations and men lie with men and women lie with women,” – and this is His language – “I will, like a feather tickles the throat, I will tickle the land to vomit you out.” And that is God’s promised judgment upon those who say, “We will be like the other nations and abandon the underpinnings of Christian ethics throughout the culture.”
If you look globally, you can see where this is happening: Europe, North America and now in Australia. Those are nations that, at one time, had been rescued from sexual barbarity and had been blessed with a Biblical ethic of family, marriage and sexuality and God had blessed those nations with stability and continued growth.
Now, these nations have returned to barbarity and why? Because of an impotent, illiterate, and apathetic church that no longer is salt and light. The very areas where you see the cultural demise of marriage and sexuality and family are the areas that it is documented the lack of impact of the church.
In opposition, take a look in Africa and take a look in South America. In those areas where the church is growing, and burgeoning, and staying on-mission and on-message and on-ministry, these movements have no foothold.
On the contrary, they refuse to embrace same-sex marriage. They refuse to undergird abortion in their cultures. It is no accident that Australia is going the way of the other nations and it is no accident that, in the church and the nations that are perverting marriage, sexuality, family and life, the church is impotent and illiterate.
Oh, dear Lord, please grant us a movement of the Gospel. Reclaim your people to vitality and send a message of life into the culture as we go and make disciples of all the nations.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin. Jessica is editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News. Jessica has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and her work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS
Birmingham-Southern College did not respond to a request for comment. Yellowhammer News has inquired with the Attorney General’s Office regarding the legality of BSC’s guidelines and will provide updates accordingly.