In her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, Rosaria Butterfield makes a case that parenting through adoption is as “real,” because it is legal, as parenting by a child’s biological mother and father.
“The Shorter Catechism question number 34 addresses what it means to be a ‘born again’ Christian. This Shorter Catechism question defines our born again status as adoption: Question: What is Adoption? Answer: Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all of the privileges of the sons of God.
“We also see this outlined in the Bible, in Galatians 4:7, ‘Therefore, you’re no longer a slave (orphan), but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.’” (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 2010-2015)
Rosaria then quotes Russell Moore who argues that the Scriptural precedent for adoption was Joseph who “adopted” Jesus and therefore adoptive fathers no less “real” parents than biological fathers.
“Borrowing from J. Gresham Machen’s book, The Virgin Birth of Christ, Moore says this: ‘if Joseph is not ‘really’ the father of Jesus, you and I are going to hell’ (p. 67). He goes on to explain: Jesus’ identity as the Christ… is tied to his identity as the descendent of David, the legitimate heir to David’s throne. Jesus saves us as David’s son, the offspring of Abraham, the Christ. That human identity came to Jesus through adoption. Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’ roots in Abraham and David through the line of Joseph (Moore, 67).” (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 2490-2494)
Russell Moore has written books advocating that facilitating adoptions should be a ministry of the church. Here Rosaria quotes Moore’s Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches:
“Joseph is not Jesus’s biological father, but he is his real father. In his adoption of Jesus, Joseph is rightly identified by the Spirit speaking through the Scriptures as Jesus’s father (Luke 2:41, 48)…
“And, perhaps most significantly, if Joseph is not ‘really’ the father of Jesus, you and I are going to hell.
“Jesus identity as the Christ, after all, is tied to his identity as the descendant of David, the legitimate heir to David’s throne. Jesus saves us as Joseph’s son, the offspring of Abraham, the Christ. That human identity came to Jesus through adoption. Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’s roots in Abraham and David through the line of Joseph. As the Presbyterian scholar, J. Gresham Machen put it, Joseph’s adoption of Jesus means Jesus belongs ‘to the house of David just as truly as if he were in a physical sense the son of Joseph. He was a gift of God to the Davidic house, not less truly, but on the contrary in a more wonderful way than if he had been descended from David by ordinary generation.’ It is through Joseph that Jesus finds his identity as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise. It is through Joseph’s legal fatherhood that ‘the hopes and fears of all the years’ find their realization in the final son of Abraham, son of David, and son of Joseph.” (Adopted for Life, pp. 60-61)
John Gresham Machen was Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Seminary between 1906 and 1929. J. Gresham Machen became the leader of the conservative revolt against modernist theology at Princeton and when the university was reorganized in 1929, from conservative to liberal control of the seminary, he left Princeton and formed Westminster Theological Seminary.
Aside from the doctrinal implications of crossing the line of Jesus’ spiritual paternity, Rosaria attributes words to J. Gresham Machen that he never wrote: “if Joseph is not ‘really’ the father of Jesus, you and I are going to hell,” nor did Russell Moore attribute that statement to him. Those are entirely Moore’s words and his opinion, not Gresham Machen’s. Nor did Gresham Machen write, “That human identity came to Jesus through adoption” or “It is through Joseph that Jesus finds his identity as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise.” Gresham Machen never used the LGBTQ catchword “identity” but merely wrote that Jesus “was a gift of God to the Davidic house, not less truly, but on the contrary in a more wonderful way, than if he had been descended from David by ordinary generation.” These are the words of Gresham Machen in The Virgin Birth of Christ:
“According to the Old Testament law, when a man died without issue, his brother could take the wife of the dead man and raise up an heir for his brother. Evidently the son was regarded as belonging to the dead man to a degree which is foreign to our ideas. Because of this Semitic way of thinking, very realistic terms could be used on Semitic ground to express a relationship other than that of physical paternity. Thus so eminent an expert as F. C. Burkitt, who certainly cannot be accused of apologetic motives, maintains that the word ‘begat’ in the Matthæan genealogy does not indicate physical paternity, but only the transmission of legal heirship, so that even if the genealogy had ended with the words, ‘Joseph begat Jesus,’ that would not have afforded the slightest indication that the author did not believe in the virgin birth. 21 Certainly, according to Jewish usage, a child born to a man's wife, and acknowledged by him, was to all intents and purposes his son.
“The truth is that in the New Testament Jesus is presented in the narratives of the virgin birth as belonging to the house of David just as truly as if he were in a physical sense the son of Joseph. He was a gift of God to the Davidic house, not less truly, but on the contrary in a more wonderful way, than if he had been descended from David by ordinary generation. 22. Who can say that this New Testament representation is invalid? The promises to David were truly fulfilled if they were fulfilled in accordance with the views of those to whom they were originally given.” (The Virgin Birth of Christ, J. Gresham Machen, p. 129)
By attributing words to J. Gresham Machen that he did not write, Rosaria Butterfield is attempting to make a case for legal adoption being the equivalent of biological parenting. The fact is that Gresham Machen quickly dismissed that very analogy in Jesus’ adoption as fallacious. His next paragraph stated the obvious distinction between the adoption of Jesus, who had no biological human father with parental rights, and human adoption in which a biological father has parental rights but relinquishes them:
“In the second place, the relation in which Jesus stood to Joseph, on the assumption that the story of the virgin birth is true, was much closer than is the case with ordinary adoption. By the virgin birth the whole situation was raised beyond ordinary analogies. In an ordinary instance of adoption there is another human being—the actual father—who disputes with the father by adoption the paternal relation to the child. Such was not the case with Joseph in his relation to Jesus, according to the New Testament narratives. He alone and no other human being could assume the rights and duties of a father with respect to this child. And the child Jesus could be regarded as Joseph’s son and heir with a completeness of propriety which no ordinary adoptive relationship would involve.” (The Virgin Birth of Christ, J. Gresham Machen, pp. 129-130)
Rosaria doesn’t miss many opportunities to vilify Christians, with no documentation whatsoever. So we read in her book, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, that many pastors reject adopted children, such as her own, as being inferior in God’s eyes to biological children:
“I have heard too many pastoral prayers that effectively erase my children from the covenant, and I am grateful to worship in a church that sees God’s majesty in adoption.” (Kindle 2484)
On one hand, Russell Moore states there are upwards of 150 million orphans in the U.S. and internationally who are waiting to be adopted—a figure that he does not document and was forced to qualify when challenged.
“Domestic adoption—that is, adopting from somewhere within your own country—carries with it extraordinary missional possibilities. After all, there are children in this country who need to be adopted, many of them languishing in foster care systems and many of them with special needs.” (Adopted for Life, p. 109)
“One anti-adoption journalist repeatedly asked me about the figure of 147 million orphans, implying that Christians want to adopt all 147 million. First of all, that number is not a Christian estimate but the estimate of UNICEF. The number does not refer to adoptable children but to children experiencing some degree of fatherlessness—the loss of one or more parents. These children do not, by a long shot, all need adoption.” (Adopted for Life, p. 227)
“On Adoption and Orphan Care: A Proposed Resolution”
“WHEREAS, upward of 150 million orphans now languish without families in orphanages, group homes, and placement systems in North America and around the world.”
On the other hand are statistics that millions of couples in the U.S. are competing for a small population of “adoptable” children due to abortion rates that drastically reduce the availability of infants.
“Why So Many Families Who Want To Adopt Can’t”
“Nearly two million infertile couples in the United States are actively trying to adopt a child. Each of those hopeful couples would give their right arm for the privilege of parenting children…whose lives are being ended prematurely by a scalpel or a pill.
“Since the dawn of time there have been pregnant women who could not parent the child in their wombs, and there have been infertile couples longing for a family. Never has it been harder to bring those two parties together—birth mother and adoptive parents. The basic problem is the growing scarcity of babies due to culture of abortion.
“Think about the current adoptive couple’s plight. After years of failed infertility interventions, a couple decides to adopt. Now they face a whole new set of challenges, including as much as $45,000 to an adoption agency in a process that could take two or three years. For every eligible baby, an invisible queue of 36 couples waits for the chance to take that baby home.”
“Thirty-Six Couples Wait for Every One Baby Who is Adopted”
“Business Library reports that ‘there are up to 36 couples waiting for every one baby placed for adoption.’”
“In the USA, there are approximately two million infertile couples waiting to adopt, many times regardless of the child’s medical problems such as Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida, HIV infection or terminally ill. Dr. Brad Imler, President of America’s Pregnancy Helpline, confirms the challenge of waiting couples by stating: ‘Only 1% of the Helpline’s annual 40,000 clients inquires about adoption.’”
If there is a ratio of 36:1 of couples for each adoptable child, it is hard to believe that 150 million children in the U.S. and internationally are languishing in orphanages. Furthermore, if there isn’t a high demand for available children in the U.S., why do Americans go to all the trouble to adopt from other countries?
The United Nations’ figures show that adoptable children are in short supply domestically and in other developed countries due to the use of birth control measures and abortion:
“While information on long-term trends is limited, statistics on domestic adoptions are available for a large number of countries starting in the late 1980s. According to these data, the number of domestic adoptions has declined in many developed countries. In Australia, for instance, the number of domestic adoptions fell from 1,107 in 1989 to 132 in 2004 so that, as a percentage of all adoptions, domestic adoptions dropped from 74 per cent in 1989 to 26 per cent in 2004 (Australia, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2004). In Germany, the reported number of domestic adoptions declined from 6,326 in 1995 to 3,749 in 2002, passing from 79 per cent to 66 per cent of all adoptions (Germany, Federal Statistics Office, 2004). France, Norway and Switzerland have also experienced downward trends in the number of domestic adoptions since the 1990s.
“Why have these declines taken place? One reason is the increasing shortage of adoptable children domestically. In developed countries, the widespread availability of reliable, safe and low cost contraception, as well as of legal abortion, has meant that fewer children are born who might be put up for adoption (UNICEF, 1998). In addition, the increased acceptance of single parenthood and the greater availability of welfare support have meant that fewer single mothers relinquish their children for adoption (Akerlof and others, 1996; Donnelly and Voydanoff, 1991; Knitzer, 2001; United States, Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2005). Furthermore, children available for adoption domestically do not necessarily have the characteristics sought by prospective adoptive parents (Steltzner, 2003). The desire for younger or healthier children has likely prompted increasing numbers of adoptive parents in developed countries to adopt foreign-born children instead of those eligible for domestic adoption.” (p. 92)
Russell Moore and Rosaria Butterfield are not the only Evangelical voices exhorting churches to get into the adoption business:
“Evangelicals Start Adoption Push”
“Prominent evangelical Christians are urging churchgoers to strongly consider adoption or foster care, not just out of kindness or biblical calling but also to answer criticism that their movement, while condemning abortion and same-sex adoption, does not do enough for children without parents.
“With backing from the evangelical group Focus on the Family and best-selling evangelical author Rick Warren, the effort to promote ‘orphan care’ among the estimated 65 million evangelicals in the United States could drastically reduce foster care rolls if successful.”
Why are leaders of three Evangelical ministries associated with the United Nations promoting Christian adoption? If they are so concerned about the welfare of children, why don’t Russell Moore, James Dobson and Rick Warren expose the UN’s global dissemination of Planned Parenthood’s radical, pornographic Comprehensive Sexuality Education which was authored by pedophiles ?
Why don’t they also expose: “The Silent Link to Human Sex Trafficking: Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE)”
Months ago I came across Rosaria Butterfield’s article about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby parts at The Gospel Coalition. So I wrote a comment about the connection between Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Sex Education and child trafficking with links to both exposes. I hoped that Rosaria would expose CSE and how it is grooming children for human trafficking, however, my comment was never approved by the TGC moderator.
Why do Rosaria and TGC advocate for LGBTQ “victims” of Christian homophobia but not for children ages 4 and up who are victims of Planned Parenthood’s sex education curriculum which introduces them to child pornography and sexual perversion without their parents’ knowledge or consent? Rosaria quotes Scripture liberally as evidence of her Christian faith, but her actions are not consistent with her testimony.
So, why are leading Evangelicals linked with the U.N. promoting church sponsored adoptions?
“Adoption by single LGBT individuals is now legal in every jurisdiction in the United States, while adoption by same-sex couples is also legal in all the 50 states and the District of Columbia as of June 26, 2015.” (Wikipedia)
These same Evangelical leaders are spreading the identical propaganda as the ACLU, which is advocating for homosexual adoptions of thousands of “children who are languishing in orphanages” when they could have two (same-sex) parents.
ACLU Fact Sheet: Overview of Lesbian and Gay Parenting, Adoption and Foster Care
“The last decade has seen a sharp rise in the number of lesbians and gay men forming their own families through adoption, foster care, artificial insemination and other means. Researchers estimate that the total number of children nationwide living with at least one gay parent ranges from six to 14 million.
“At the same time, the United States is facing a critical shortage of adoptive and foster parents. As a result, hundreds of thousands of children in this country are without permanent homes. These children languish for months, even years, within state foster care systems that lack qualified foster parents and are frequently riddled with other problems. In Arkansas, for example, the foster care system does such a poor job of caring for children that it has been placed under court supervision.
“Legal and Policy Overview of Lesbian and Gay Parenting
“Many states have moved to safeguard the interests of children with gay or lesbian parents. For example, at least 21 states have granted second-parent adoptions to lesbian and gay couples, ensuring that their children can enjoy the benefits of having two legal parents, especially if one of the parents dies or becomes incapacitated.”
National Center for Lesbian Rights
“A second parent adoption (also called a co-parent adoption) is a legal procedure that allows a same-sex parent, regardless of whether they have a legally recognized relationship to the other parent, to adopt her or his partner’s biological or adoptive child without terminating the first parent’s legal status as a parent.”
Dr. Robert Lopez, a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was raised by a lesbian couple after his mother divorced his father. Following the divorce he had no contact with his father until his mother died after which he and his father developed a relationship. Dr. Lopez has stated that LGBTQs purposely break up heterosexual marriages, remove the heterosexual parent from their biological children and usurp their parental rights.
Recently, Dr. Lopez was interviewed by Janet Mefferd on the need of children to have a mother and a father. Not only do they need a mother and a father, says Dr. Lopez, it is their “human right” according to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
In a 2015 interview, Lopez elaborated on why the homosexual ‘right to have a child’ is a human rights disaster well underway.
“The Reckless Joyride of Gay Parenting”
“Robert Oscar Lopez is an associate professor of English and Classics at Cal State-Northridge. He specializes in American literature and loves Michel Foucault. He identifies as bisexual and is married [to a woman] and the father of two children. And in August 2012, he published ‘Growing Up with Two Moms’ in Public Discourse, which described his life growing up with a lesbian mother and her partner. Because he shared his story, he was labeled a homophobe and became the target of a silencing campaign that worked to keep him off the air and off college campuses.
“Professor Lopez talked to “The Stream” about his new book, co-edited with Rivka Edelman, Jephthah’s Daughters: Innocent Casualties in the War for Family ‘Equality.’ The previous three installments of our interview can be read here, here, and here.
The Stream: You knew that you were different and that your family was different. How did you come to see a mother and a father as a child’s human right?
“Robert Oscar Lopez: Here the crucial moment was when I read the interview with Jean-Dominique Bunel in Figaro, in January 2013. He was a human rights specialist who was raised by two women. When he was interviewed in the midst of all the upheavals in France over gay marriage, he introduced the topic of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. His use of human rights language totally shifted my focus. I realized — I don’t have to prove through social science that some statistical differential proves I ‘needed’ a father. A relationship with my father is a long-recognized human right. It’s my prerogative to ‘redress my grievances’ because I am a human and humans have rights. That was a major change in my thinking, and I have to say, the American family movement really owes that insight to the French…
“There were groups like the American Sociological Association that declared, as long as ten years ago, that there was no difference between having two dads and a mom and a dad or two moms. They had heard next to nothing from grown children of gays (COGs) talking objectively and analytically about their own experience. This isn’t like projecting weather patterns (which are hard to predict, too!). They’re talking about a complex human experience with enormous implications in the lives of individuals, and they think with a quick rundown of a few Excel spreadsheets, they can superimpose their rationalized vision onto people.
“Strangely enough, the social sciences abandoned the entire model of empiricism for a skewed and twisted rationalism. Imagine a poor distortion of Plato — you entrust a guardian class with the power Plato imagined in Republic, but you never teach the Philosopher King philosophy. And then you give no credence to any kind of truthful assessment of reality in the Aristotelian sense at all. It was destined to backfire, which is what happened…
“How does the asserted right to have a child become the right to take a child away from its parents — and why are poor women particularly vulnerable?
“Robert Oscar Lopez: Well, it’s all quite elemental and also ineluctable. If you can’t conceive a child with your own bodies then you need the genetic material from someone else. The gay parenting movement functions in a detached fantasy world, where they think if the child is conceived with a donor’s sperm, then somehow the loss will be lesser (or non-existent) relative to a child who is conceived by a father and then separated by divorce and abandonment.
“The father is the father, whether society acknowledges his relationship to the child or erases it by issuing a false birth certificate. So this entire ‘right to have a child’ is a human rights disaster well underway.
“Poor women are the most vulnerable because unlike ‘erased’ fathers, they had invasive medical procedures and/or intense bonding with the child before being washed out of the family arrangement. Men might donate their sperm on a lark because all they do is masturbate while watching porn, ejaculate into a cup, and then dash off. Egg donors have to take dangerous drugs and undergo extraction surgery. Surrogate moms bond with their gestating baby and their whole bodies are enlisted in the service of bringing the child to childbirth. Their own children see them get pregnant and then give birth — but then the baby disappears. It’s terribly traumatic and women will not do this on a lark. They will do it out of economic necessity. This makes the situation for them quite precarious.”
We are indeed living in perilous times when the basic needs of children are sacrificed to the “rights” of homosexuals who demand access to other people’s children. Last May, Ontario, Canada “Bill 89” gave the government authority to remove children from families that oppose the LGBTQI and gender ideology agenda. The Ontario law also allows government agencies to effectively ban couples who disagree with that agenda from foster parenting or adopting children and then to give these children to LGBTQs.
“Ontario passes ‘totalitarian’ bill allowing government to take kids from Christian homes”
“TORONTO, June 1, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne Liberals have passed what critics describe as ‘totalitarian’ Bill 89 by a vote of 63 to 23 on the last day before Queen’s Park adjourns for the summer.
“Pro-family advocates warn Bill 89 gives the state more power to seize children from families that oppose the LGBTQI and gender ideology agenda, and allows government agencies to effectively ban couples who disagree with that agenda from fostering or adopting children.
“Bill 89, or the Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act, 2017, repeals and replaces the former Child and Family Services Act that governs child protection services, and adoption and foster care services.
“It adds ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ as factors to be considered ‘in the best interests of the child.’
“At the same time, it deletes the religious faith in which the parents are raising the child as a factor to be considered, and mandates child protection services consider only the child’s own ‘creed’ or ‘religion’ when assessing the best interests of the child.”
This draconian legislation follows on the heels of Ontario parents removing their children from schools because of the Comprehensive Sexuality Education which indoctrinates them in LGBT perversion. In the United States, those who reject transgenderism are banned from adoption and working with children in the state of Illinois.
“June 1, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has instituted sweeping changes to its policies and procedures in caring for children who experience gender dysphoria that essentially weed out all employees and volunteers who cannot in good conscience support and promote transgender ideology.
“Illinois now ‘requires that all LGBTQ children and youth be placed in an affirming safe housing, receive LGBTQ competent medical and mental health services, and have equal opportunity and access to care.’”
LGBTQ facilitators Russell Moore and Rosaria Butterfield are promoting church sponsored adoptions at the same time they are advocating for homosexual inclusion in the churches and governments are decreeing that Christians who oppose the LGBT agenda are “unfit” to raise their own children or anyone else’s children. The confluence of these agendas is not a coincidence. They are fulfilling the radical agenda of the Marxist-driven Homosexual Manifesto, which declares that when “Gays” come into power, heterosexuality will be criminalized and children will be raised by homosexuals.
In the long term, this agenda will result in global depopulation through sterilization and suicides, which may be the hidden agenda of Cultural Marxism. Gays and lesbians do not reproduce and total gender reassignment requires hormone replacements that sterilize young people for life.
“The suicide rate in the transgender community is staggering. Additionally, studies have shown higher than average rates of mental illnesses, such as depression, in transgender individuals.” (“Summer Camp For Transgender Children”)
Since LGBTs won’t be reproducing, they will want to adopt children and teach them to embrace gay, lesbian or transgender lifestyles. So there are more serious dangers to children from homosexual parenting than the absence of a biological father or mother:
“The Connection between Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse”
Also detrimental is the ongoing exposure of adopted children to sexual perversion which causes them to present many physical and emotional disorders to which Robert Oscar Lopez referred in a recent speech to the Anglican Synod:
“Large numbers of children are now being denied their mother & father and forced to grow up in gay homes. Anti-discrimination laws make many agencies fearful of being sued so they do not vet gay adoptions as closely as other adoptions. Note that Dan Savage, for instance, is a famous gay adopter who got custody of children then spoke publicly about his husband and he having threeway sex with at least nine other people. Who wants to be in that environment? Parents, friends, co-workers, and church brothers all have to deal with the tremendous aftermath of the Gay Disaster consuming so much of society…
“Even if there's no trauma or coercion involved in the young person's decision to identify as gay, problems within the gay culture are rampant. While we have examples of well-adjusted gays, many who come out as gay will be stuck with particularly troubled dating networks. Please note that none of these crises can be entirely or even principally attributed to homophobia from outsiders. Depression, Anxiety, Eating Disorders, Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Compulsive Sex, Sexual Violence, Emotional Abuse/Divorce, Steroid Abuse, Overeating (Lesbians), Domestic Violence, Pornography Addiction, Sex Work, Suicide, Racism, Conflicts with peers/risk-taking behavior, Weapons, Infertility, Sexually Transmitted Diseases.”
Although Rosaria Butterfield and Russell Moore portray homosexuals as wounded “victims” of homophobia, the “Gay Manifesto” reveals the true agenda of gay rights organizations with whom Russell Moore is known to conspire against the Church:
“We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.”
In his book, Adopted for Life, Moore shares his story of adopting two sons from Russia, and his strong protective instincts to shield them from predators:
“I've always loathed child molesters and raged against the way the courts and churches often coddle them. But I’ve never had my blood pressure accelerate the way it does when a suspicious acting, creepily friendly man kneels to talk to my kids.” (p. 64)
If the head of the SBC’s “Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission” reacts so viscerally to child predators, does he not consider how Christians feel about their children and grandchildren being exposed to the aggressive LGBTQ intrusion into their families, churches, schools, bathrooms, locker rooms, etc.? What does Mr. Moore expect us to think when he and his Southern Baptist ERLC carries on a “dialogue” with the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBTQ organizations who are demanding that the SBC change their doctrine that homosexuality is a sin punishable by eternity in hell. Upon learning of these secret meetings, Thomas Littleton wrote in an Open Letter to Russell Moore:
“I was asked, by a Christian brother in convention leadership, to meet with the activist who came to our city and state to organize communities and jump start the Human Rights Campaign’s state offices. It was an unofficial sit down so as not to validate the activist while trying to understand better their intentions and methods, for which they had $8.5 million in new funding to engage churches in three Southern states.
“Because of our candid approach to the meeting, we were told very openly that the goal was to silence opposition to gay marriage and to end the ‘traditional rhetoric that homosexuality is a sin and that we would go to hell if we engage in it.’ The various groups who were partnering with HRC were sending gay couples and transgender or ‘gender bending’ teens into our churches to ‘test reaction.’ There were new training manuals and tool kits being developed to persuade “Conflicted Christians” out of long held Biblical views. (I have copies of these, Dr. Moore, if you care to become more informed.) But the next revelation is the most shocking.
“I also found out about the ongoing dialogue between you and your offices on the one side, and the HRC and other LGBTQ activists on the other. The upcoming ERLC 2014 conference on the issues had created an excited buzz among LGBTQ activists especially on their social media. One of your conference speakers who was a ‘same sex attracted’ or ‘Gay Christian’ tweeted out mid-conference that ‘the Southern Baptist and gay community break bread together in Nashville.’”
Masha Gessen, the radical lesbian Russian journalist quoted in Part 6: Queer Theory, left Russia when Putin Banned US Citizens From Adopting Russian Children Due To Pedophile Epidemic.
“Gessen was born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Moscow to Alexander and Yelena Gessen. In 1981, when Gessen was a teenager, she and her family moved to the United States. As an adult in 1991, she moved to Moscow, where she worked as a journalist. Gessen holds both Russian and US citizenship. Her brothers are Keith Gessen, Daniel Gessen and Philip Gessen.
“Gessen served as a member of the board of directors for the Moscow-based LGBT rights organization ‘Triangle’ from 1993 to 1998.
“In an extensive October 2008 profile of Vladimir Putin for Vanity Fair, Gessen reported that the young Putin had been ‘an aspiring thug’ and that ‘the backward evolution of Russia began’ within days after his inauguration in 2000.
“She contributed several dozen commentaries on Russia to The New York Times blog ‘Latitude’ between November 2011 and December 2013. Among her subjects were the banning of so-called ‘homosexual propaganda’ and other related laws, the harassment and beating of journalists, the depreciation in value of the ruble, and other relative issues.
“In March 2013, politician Vitaly Milonov, who promoted the Russian law against foreign adoption of Russian children, championed the law by saying: "The Americans want to adopt Russian children and bring them up in perverted families like Masha Gessen’s.’…
“In December 2013, she moved to New York because Russian authorities had begun to talk about taking children away from gay parents. In March, ‘the St Petersburg legislator [Milonov] who had become a spokesman for the law [against ‘homosexual propaganda' towards children] started mentioning me and my ‘perverted family’ in his interviews,’...
“Gessen argued in a February 2014 article for Slate that the international, and especially American, LGBT movement had failed gay Russians at the Sochi Olympics. ‘The Sochi Games were the U.S. gay rights movement’s first real attempt to venture into international work,’ she wrote. ‘It was an embarrassment. If U.S. groups continue to do nothing but stage fundraisers and strategy sessions, it will be a disgrace.’…
“In March 2014, Gessen wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post on Putin’s speech to the Duma in which she expressed concern that ‘Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world’. Gessen stated that when Putin ‘says he is protecting ethnic Russians in Ukraine, he means he is protecting them from the many terrible things that come from the West,’ notably gay rights. In the view of Russians, argued Gessen, the West ‘is literally taking over, and only Russian troops’ can protect Ukraine from ‘the homosexuals marching in from Brussels.’”
Will Christian churches ever be legally bound to provide same-sex adoption services? According to Thomas Littleton, “The entire homosexual agenda will be fully forced on the churches by virtue of Faith-Based Partnerships.”
“Faith-based partnerships” is a euphemism for “government-church partnerships” in which the government gains control over churches by funding their various facilities and ministries. Most denominations secretly receive government grants to fund their ministries and social service projects “for the common good.” “Common good” in Communitarian newspeak does not include spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ since Obama’s faith-based legislation prohibits religious proselytizing—and this prohibition has not been rescinded by President Trump.
Russell Moore is no doubt aware of the looming religious liberty disaster for churches in faith-based partnerships, since former SBC president Frank Page served on President Obama’s Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Yet Moore recommends another social service through which churches can help communities “for the common good”:
“If we follow in the way of Joseph, perhaps we’ll see a battalion of new church-sponsored clinics for pregnant women in crisis situations… Perhaps we’ll train God-called women in our churches to counsel confused young women, counselors able and equipped to provide an alternative to the slick but deadly propaganda of the abortion profiteers. If we walk in Joseph’s way, perhaps we’ll see pastors who will prophetically call on Christians to oppose the death culture by rescuing babies and children through adoption.” (p. 83)
Dr. Moore omits to mention the matter of faith-based adoption agencies being legally required to service same-sex couples or forfeit government funding. This requirement was mentioned in the 2007 CBS News article cited above, “Evangelicals Start Adoption Push.”
“Last year, Catholic Charities of Boston got out of the adoption business after it was revealed it has been placing children with same-sex parents for a decade. The organization was caught between a Vatican statement calling gay adoptions ‘gravely immoral’ and a Massachusetts state law requiring agencies that take state money to make adoption available to same-sex parents.”
How many churches can afford to build or rent space for a “church-sponsored clinic” for women in crisis situations? How many of these churches inspired by Russell Moore’s adoption challenge will take government funds and, like Catholic Charities, discover that they must make adoption available to same-sex couples? They will also discover that faith-based legislation prohibits “proselytizing” that is, sharing the gospel. Yet many of these churches will not be able refuse government funds because they have mortgages on their faith-based social service facilities. The fact is, faith-based partnerships are a Marxist trap to force Churches to allow sexual perversion and to suppress the gospel of Jesus Christ.
For more information on this government funding trap, read Thomas Littleton’s article, Faith-Based Healthcare Clinics Prove a Slippery Slope.
