Those who value the sanctity and uniqueness of marriage view the Civil Partnership legislation that has been foisted upon our country with a mixture of horror and dismay.
No matter what deceptive packaging is used to present it, this new legislation - granting homosexuals almost identical rights as married couples - is gay marriage in all but name. As such, it is a wicked parody of a divinely-established institution.
Back in the beginning, when God declared, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him," He did not create another man as a suitable partner for Adam; He made a woman and brought her to him (Genesis 2:18; 21-24).
The same biblical passage makes it clear that God created our first parents male and female for the purpose of cohabitation – one man, with one woman, dwelling together for life. This divine arrangement of the marriage union was endorsed and emphasised by the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament: "From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female … what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mark 10:6-9).
Any attempt to redefine, or promote an alternative to, this divine pattern is sinful.
Homosexuality is manifestly guilty of doing this. It is a perversion of God’s intended function for male and female. Drawing attention to the deviant nature of this practice, Paul notes in Romans 1:26&27: "... Even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."
Men are not meant to be romantic partners for men, nor are women for women. To call a union of two persons of the same sex a "marriage" (or to confer upon it parity with marriage in the form of a 'civil partnership') is perverse.
The pictures beamed into our living rooms of the loving, caring "gay couple" who want to both 'celebrate their love for each other' (and 'protect their legal rights' through the vehicle of this Civil Partnership Act) cut no ice with God. His verdict is that homosexuals know nothing about love, but instead share "vile affections" (the terms employed in Romans 1:26, where the word translated "vile" means "filthy, dirty, evil and dishonourable").
God also created the first couple in the human race male and female for the purpose of procreation, as Genesis 1:27&28 make clear: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth’."
If, in His original creation of humans, God had created two persons of the same sex, there would not be a human race in existence today. The whole idea of two persons of the same sex marrying is, at the very least, both abnormal and absurd.
While the civil government, or some compromised clergyman, may confer a ‘blessing’ on a homosexual marriage, it is evident God will not!
Which brings us to another point of concern. Not only is this Civil Partnership legislation an impugning of Scripture and an attack on the family; we are also extremely concerned about the implications of this new legislation for persons employed in Registrar’s Offices across our country who would be obliged to perform the new civil partnership ceremonies. What protection do they have, should they object to involvement in these ceremonies on biblical and ethical grounds?
The reason why we are saddled with the Civil Partnership Act is because our nation has abandoned the Bible. In Romans 1:19-32, God traces the root cause of the practice and popularisation of homosexuality back to a departure from, and rejection of, the Bible.
This is one issue to which the church must speak with a clear voice. Only a return to biblical principles will safeguard the future of our nation and rescue it from moral catastrophe.
Rev. Dr. Ian Brown
Convenor, Government & Morals Committee
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