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Listen to the 10 min audio
Read the transcript:
DOMINO EFFECT OF GAY MARRIAGE IS NOW COMMERCIAL SURROGACY
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, I want to take you out of a story out of CNS News. On March 12th, the governor of Washington signed into law a bill amending the state’s Uniform Parentage Act. This act officially permits women to be paid for carrying someone else’s child — in other words, surrogacy. It legalizes commercial surrogacy.
Sponsors of the bill insist that the legislation is to reduce suffering of infertile couples, but its real-world result would be to further commodify human life and exploit desperate women.
A 2016 Chicago Tribune study of fertility clinics in several different cities found that 10 to 20 percent of donor eggs are actually going to gay men having babies via surrogacy and, in a lot of places, that number is up to 50 percent from just five years ago. These “suffering infertile couples” — well, of course they’re infertile because they’re homosexual couples.
Harry, how is it that this community has had so much leverage on an issue that is so controversial?
DR. REEDER: There’s a couple of things here, Tom. First of all, in terms of your direct question, the LGBTQ community, which has 3 percent of the population, has an outsized effect in the culture because it is able to tap into the heartbeat of a secular culture, which is propelled by what Romans 1 reveals.
If you want to read the death spiral of our culture, just read Romans 1:18 through the end of the chapter, in which a culture falls into the death spiral that then comes under the judgement of God and the judgement of God is for sexual promiscuity that pervades a society, and then sexual perversion that pervades a society and then the social approval of sexual promiscuity and sexual perversion.
However, what fuels it is rebellion against God. They know God but they will not acknowledge God and so, when a society sets its heart and its mind to being a godless society, which we have done under the rubric of secularism, then all ethical restraints eventually fall away until you have absolute chaos.
In other words, you have every man does what is right in his own eyes, therefore, there is no right or wrong because there’s only “my right” and “my wrong.” Therefore, now we’re told there are no boundaries for marriage — marriage can be whatever you want to as long as its two consenting adults.
WHAT IS THE BIBLICAL PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE?
If now, the sanctity of life and the bringing forward of life into this world, historically, it has been that we bring forth life biologically — a man and a woman in the context of marriage so that the child has parents and the child has the stability of a family.
Now, we have said, “No, we’re going to redefine family by redefining marriage.” If you’ll remember, we constantly said in the Obergefell decision that it is a fabrication of marriage — it isn’t marriage, it can’t be marriage — because marriage is a conjugal, procreative, monogamous, heterosexual relationship.
Well, it’s not heterosexual in same-sex marriage, it’s not conjugal in same-sex marriage and it can’t procreate so there is the perversity of the conjugal relationship and then there is the editing of what it means to be procreative.
WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF THESE “MARRIAGES”?
And so now you cannot have a conjugal relationship and you can’t have a procreative -relationship, but we want to have “children” so what will we do? Well, we’ll hire out the sperm or we’ll hire out the egg and we will hire out — in the case of two men in a same-sex marriage — a womb so now we have commodified children. The mantra in the state of Washington is, “These are consenting people and, as long as the people are consenting, it doesn’t matter what we do.”
There was a program in magazine called “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” in which they gave awards for astonishing achievements. Well, one of them every year, was somebody trying to break the record of how many dominoes they could put in place and then they would fall and, these amazingly architectural and intricate configurations where dominoes would be falling all the way around the room, well, that’s what we’re seeing in our culture — what’s the next domino to fall?
In the sexual revolution, the domino to fall because of the fact that sexual promiscuity is going to bring unwanted children, the domino to fall was the sanctity of life and abortion becomes the sacrament of the sexual revolution. And then comes the domino of the sanctity of marriage, and then the sanctity of family and now the sanctity of procreation.
WHAT WILL NEXT 20 YEARS BRING: TECHNOLOGICALLY AND SOCIALLY?
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, just yesterday, we talked about the fact that abortion has brought in this death culture. Surrogacy — which, by the way is outlawed in the state of New York — what will be the outcome 20 years from now as we look at the issue of surrogacy and homosexual couples raising children?
DR. REEDER: One of the fundamental casualties of same-sex marriage is children growing up in a fatherless or motherless home and now, with this surrogacy industry, women are going to be further objectified. Childbearing is going to become objectified because it’ll become an industry that will require governmental regulation. What you also begin to see is the inevitable mandating of people’s participation in this industry of surrogacy and, eventually, governmental support and taxpayer support and all of those things.
Therefore, the destruction of the family is further, the destruction of marriage is further, the joy of childbearing is destroyed and, of course, the sense is destroyed that, when you look at a child, the husband and the wife are able to look at each other and they’re able to say, “Look what God has brought forth and there’s some of me and some of you and here it is in this child. Isn’t it amazing, the blessings of God?” Now, this child that we are invested in spiritually, martially, familial investment and our own personal being is invested as God has brought forth this life through us, now let’s invest in the life of this child. Whatever we do, we must not idolize this child but, whatever we do, we must now raise to adulthood a child that’s able to leave us and cleave to another.”
And that’s what takes place in a true marriage — leaving and cleaving. In the fabrication of same-sex marriage, there is no true leaving and there is no true cleaving and, therefore, there is no true propagation of a next generation. There is only the manipulation of technology, the objectivization of women and the process of having a child, and now the child will be raised as a commodity that was manufactured in the home, instead of a person who was brought forth through the instrumentality of a husband and a wife and the sacredness of a marriage bed.
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES MUST STAY STRONG SHOW GOD’S WAY
Therefore, Tom, again, we’re back to Christians understanding what is taking place in the culture and bringing forth in the culture the witness and stability of not only a Christian world and life view, but a Christian world and lifestyle where our marriages are not only physically framed, male and female, but spiritually founded in the life and hope of Christ and joyfully presenting to the world the stability and the testimony of a Christian marriage, Christian family and covenant children raised in and for Christ in which the grace of God overcomes our sin and we’re able to show to the world that embracing God’s law by the power of God’s grace is joy in life while rebellion against God’s law simply brings deadness, despair, and destruction and ultimate destruction in life. Come to a better way and that way is Jesus, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
COMING UP WEDNESDAY: MORE BIBLE-SUPPORTING FINDS IN JERUSALEM
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, on Wednesday’s edition of Today in Perspective, I want to take you to a story around an archeological dig in Jerusalem’s old city. Some interesting things have been discovered.
DR. REEDER: Yeah, there’s an interesting discipline that developed out of the 19th century and it’s called archeology and it’s been interesting to watch its impact in the affirmation and proclamation and propagation of Biblical Christianity. Another find has added to the affirmed veracity of God’s Word as truth.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin, editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News, who transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and whose work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
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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.